A few months ago I quit playing Age of Conan for 2 reasons.

The first, and most important to me, was the fact that nearly all loot acquired, even loot acquired via questing amounted to garbage.

Selling it at a vendor fetched so little as to make it not worth the effort. Often the loot couldn't be worn by your class (especially if you were like me and chose to play the Herald of Xotli class). And as seems to be the tendency in MMOs I've played recently, NO TRADE ran a muck. The problem with NO TRADE, which was implemented to "solve" an abundance of the same type of item in the world economy, is that it kills the player economy as a whole.

I can remember back in the days of EQ 1 (well before the bazaar) when I acquired fantastic loot simply by haggling with other players. This gave me a part of the game that quickly had me addicted. Questing and combat seemed meaningless to me compared with the fun of taking a 100 platinum and acquiring 1000 platinum worth of loot.

And now, having played EQ2 and AoC, I simply can't find my interest again. The whole thrill of the game for people like me is the treasure involved in the fantasy world--yet if that treasure has no monetary value, then it's not really treasure at all, but worthless smatterings of junk weighing down my inventory.

So my question is, how can we as BYOND world developers (or even just as game developers), invent worlds without NO TRADE, and avoid having items worth zilch? Since the implementation of NO TRADE engenders a worthlessness of its own, should it simply be abolished, since more fun can be had without it?