11.0.1 Will there be a player-driven economy, and if so why, and how will it work?
The simple answer is yes. But player-driven economies in MMOGs are really complicated. It's probably been the source of more debates internally, with other developers, and within the MMOG community in general than just about any other topic.
11.0.2 How do you feel about players selling accounts, items, and other in-game ‘property’ outside of the game, in auctions and/or for real money?
It's too early to announce actual policies, but we will say we've never been fans of selling items outside of the game for a game like Vanguard, which is all about escapism from real life and where the money you have in real life shouldn't give you an advantage in-game. Ideally we enter these virtual worlds to escape the real world... who we are, how much money we have, etc. What we earn in-game should have little or no bearing on what we've accomplished in real-life.
When you encounter another character in-game who is equipped with rare items, it's bad enough when you think he might have twinked without warrant, and even worse when you find out he just bought them on eBay. To us, it diminishes the accomplishments of those who actually earned those items by playing the game. Now, that is not to say that other MMOGs designed to support real world transactions are 'bad'; rather, Vanguard was not designed to be this type of game. Lastly, even for games that do allow for real world transactions, Sigil feels that such transactions should be controlled by the developer/publisher of the game and not by third party companies looking to profit off of games they did not work hard to develop themselves. Even in games that do allow or even support real world transactions, you will find that the vast majority of them do not allow third party companies or individuals to facilitate these transactions -- such activity is almost always not allowed and clearly forbidden in the game's EULA.
11.0.3 How ‘item-centric’ is the game; how important is item acquisition?
Vanguard will be a very item acquisition-centric game... questing, crafting, and adventuring to obtain items that enhance your character will be key, as will honing your skills and abilities. Crafting will be quite item centric also. Tool quality will be as important in harvesting as weapon quality is in adventuring.
11.0.4 Will there be automated ways of selling items, such as a bazaar, or seller NPCs (vendors)?
We’re not too fond of global or centralized selling/buying systems. To us, part of a virtual world is making exotic lands that take time to travel to, have unique items, and allowing merchants and the like to create 'silk roads'... transporting items more common in one region to another, and selling them for more because they're rarer there. Global chat channels, bazaars, and the like take away from a lot of this.
Now, that doesn't mean we don't plan on having player controlled vendors and the like, ala Ultima Online for example, but they should be spread out all over the world. Additionally, we expect players to move their items around with them, with some limitations, either using a horse or a ship as storage (or as a 'mobile bank' per se). Players will also be able to store their goods and items in houses they own and banks will allow access to items stored in any bank on the same continent. To move items to other continents, players will either have to move these goods themselves using ships or pay a fee at the bank to mail those items to banks on other continents -- also, in addition to a fee, mailing items across continents (e.g. between Thestra, Kojan, and Qalia) will take time -- if you decide to move items in this fashion it may take a real life day or two before your items arrive.
11.0.5 Will there be item decay? If so, why? What is it for?
Item decay should never be a hassle... things wear out in real life, and we play games to escape real life.
Item decay also shouldn't be a means by which items are removed from the player economy -- it's not a valid item sink in our opinion. To make it one, the rate at which items leave the world due to degradation would have to approach the rate at which they were entering the world, resulting in a game that certainly couldn't consider item acquisition as a focus or retention mechanism (and Vanguard does).
Item decay could, however, be done in an interesting fashion to increase interdependence between those preferring tradeskills and those preferring adventuring. At this point it is still undecided as to whether Vanguard will utilize some form of item decay, but if we do it will again be tied to crafting and not be there as an item sink.
11.0.6 Will there be in-game item and money sinks to encourage players to remove items and money from the economy?
Yes, these are important components of slowing and controlling item and money inflation (MUDflation).
11.0.7 Will items have restrictions on them to control who can use them? Will there be item class restrictions and item race restrictions?
The answer to both questions is yes.
11.0.8 Will there be item class Restrictions?
Yes.
11.0.9 Will there be item race Restrictions?
Yes.
11.0.10 Will there be item level Restrictions?
There won't be 'hard' level restrictions, no; we will use 'soft caps' on statistical gains and usefulness. This means that if a lower level character equips a high level item he or she will be able to wield it but not receive nearly the benefits that a higher level character would. Our current thinking is that if the level delta is great enough, the benefit to the character would be that the item is slightly better than one of the better items at his level. This hopefully rewards the long time player who has 'twinked' his alt but at the same time doesn't imbalance the game at lower levels where that twinked character is soloing deep reds and the like. We also intend to implement a 'Veteran System' such that if you have other characters on the same shard that are as high or higher in level as the items you twink down to your new characters, our item scaling system won't be as severe in order to encourage people to create and play alternate characters.
11.0.11 Will there be item gender Restrictions?
No.
11.0.12 Will there be faction restrictions on items?
We hope to support faction-based equipment.
11.0.13 Will items be used to help define class roles at high levels?
In some cases, yes.
11.0.14 Will there be epic or unique items or artifacts?
Yes. You will also be able to craft epic and unique items
11.0.15 How will item storage work?
Items can be stored on your character's person, in a residential building the character owns, or on a character’s horse or ship.
Because a player has a limited ability to store a lot of items on his actual character, he'll want to store items on horses and ships which then become virtual 'bank's of sorts. He or she can then move these vehicles around with him, with some restrictions, and have access to the multiple sets of armor and other items he or she will need on a situational basis and/or for CRs (corpse retrieval). These vehicles also help to store items found in dungeons, while harvesting, etc. Houses and other player-owned buildings provide additional storage, though aren't mobile.
Character burden and number of item slots will definitely be something that players will have to think about. Even though a player has excellent equipment for adventuring and crafting, they will probably have to make a decision about what items to bring with them at any one time.
11.0.16 What are your views on item model reuse in these games? In some past MMOGs one art model was used repeatedly (items and monsters) to represent several different objects in the game.
Sadly, it’s a fact of life that’s going to happen. There is just an incredible amount of work and data that goes into these games. The trick is to be careful how they are reused so that every time you turn around, you aren’t seeing the same model again.
11.0.17 Will players be able to custom color their armor?
The programmers and character art teams have put together a very flexible system, so there should be a lot of visual variety. Still not a 1:1 ratio of actual item to appearance, though. If we have player-tintable stuff, it will likely be decorative items, but that's not certain at this point.