Just make the things nodrop?
 

It's absurd that with this massive world in which we play, the focus of discussion revolves around a few items that - after about a year - lose most of their functional significance. All that matters to the farmers is how much they can sell their manastones for in the future.

So why not just make these few key items nodrop? Both options are "not classic", but surely making a few items nodrop is less intrusive on the "classic" front than significantly altering the game mechanics (with /list).

Sure, they'll still be farmed. But once the neckbeards have loaded up all their level 1 alts they'll lose interest knowing there's no commercial value down the road in camping even more. Seems to me this would create an ecosystem which would stabilize itself after the first 3-6 months.

By the time the casuals are leveled high enough to earn their own manastones, the hardcores will have already got their fill and then some. The /list option seems a bit heavy-handed when something more organic like this would yield a similar end result.

Thoughts?

you realize the other item, in the same situation as manastone, is already no drop?(guise of the deceiver)

Clearly your solution does not solve the problem.

Why not let the guys who have been doing this for 10 years try their well thought out solution, and if it doesn't quite work I'm sure they'll adjust it and you can come back and bitch about whatever idea they have for green 2.0

In what way was I bitching? I offered a constructive suggestion for discussion and asked for feedback. Dude, step away from the keyboard and get some fresh air.

Back to the point... Manastones are selling for 400k+ today - 10 years after launch - because of their rarity. A large reason people would camp them 24/7 on green is for that exact reason; future consideration. Making items nodrop will not eliminate farming, however it will remove one significant motivation for it. There's no magic bullet solution. However there are mitigating factors that are worth consideration before introducing a brand new game mechanic that couldn't be further from "classic", which is ultimately the goal here.

I'd believe the larger concern is around guises. Farmed manastones get into the economy.

You would end up seeing a group take the camp and hold the camp until they each have a guise on a pile of level one alts.

If you think manastones sell for a lot, you should have seen what delf mask characters sold for when character selling was allowed.

To that end, making manastones no drop would probably be worse. Instead of "needing" one, people would argue they need one for every character they might want to play since they could never trade it to an alt.

If we're going to go un-classic enough to make it no drop, we can go un-classic enough to just delete the damn thing and remove the whole headache over a stupid bit of pixels.

That's my point though. Imagine each of these few key items were all nodrop from day one. Yes they'd still be farmed around the clock for alts, however it's a finite number of people that hardcore who want to do it. And by virtue of their play style they'd also be the first ones high enough level to do it.

By the time the masses become level-appropriate for those camps, the hardcores will have already outfitted all of their alts and moved on. The only thing that keeps someone on a camp after their 8+ alts have the drop is farming more to sell years down the road. So just eliminate that factor by making the currently-tradeable items nodrop.

people are endlessly discussing legacy items because "obtain legacy items for use on Blue, the server I actually want to play on" is the sole reason most people have for playing Green at all, OP

Fourth thread on the front page presuming the staff are complete morons and had never thought of this One Neat Trick.

Manastones are old world only though. If/when blue does eventually include custom content, that will further isolate their use to three continents and the whole port/gate method.

Slightly off-topic, but it's also worth considering that items currently as good or better than manastones, such as elder beads or pre-nerf fungi sticks, might face similar expansion-based restrictions once/if those custom zones are released.

You offered a meaningless suggestion, because as the person whom you're insulting pointed out, being no-drop is irrelevant. I couldn't give two shits about a manastone on blue or green because I don't plan on being pathetic for that long. Guise though? I can make use of that even while I'm attempting to relive my past - which doesn't involve hoarding pixels for a decade and then selling them - and it's no-drop.

You also suggested you can perfectly predict the climate of a dead game's economy 2 years in the future after being merged with another server that will almost immediately die upon merging. That's questionable enough to not use your suggestion.

*The only solution is a list that allows everyone fair access, considering people didn't know about this on classic, it's unclassic to allow it to be monopolized.