Wickedry

In regards to player owned shops, I'd like to see it done as a multi-window shop offering multiple methods of interaction.

Window 1: List items to sell, up to say 30 items at a time for a price the player sets.

Window 2: List items to buy, how many of each item you want for prices you set, VERY useful for material purchases.

Window 3: Offer your crafting services, in a way where you set the price on your service, other people gather the materials and use your shop to craft the items for them, they pay for your service & get their items while you get the gold from the sale of your service and the experience from crafting whatever they had made.

This is pretty much how Ragnarok Online did it and it worked beautifully, players seeking to buy specific materials could set up shop next to spawns of that material around the world and encourage people to gather it for a bit of profit, or those wishing to sell say, a specific level of potion, could set up in that level of area and increase their odds of making a sale.

That said, player shops do generate some absolutely horrid lag in highly populated areas, people tend to complain about lag now...imagine 50+ people crowding the bank in EC 24/7 and that's just from the shops set up.

I'd personally prefer an auction house or both, however if we only get player shops, this is how I'd like to see it done.

I still fully intend to do quests with every character I make, dungeon exp isn't that much better compared to just finding a good spot out in the world and slaughtering hordes or questing, lot of fuss over nothing.

Even for gold gain, while it is nice getting guaranteed items constantly to sell, it's not like drops don't exist out killing random crap, still sells good too and a hell of a lot less hassle than constantly running through an area and resetting it.

Profit is what a few of the richer players with already decked out characters are worried about, some of the same people who spend all day pking people on TA because they don't like the "easy resource gathering".

Doesn't really matter though, more story mode dungeons have already been all but confirmed, I know it's the only way this game will keep my interest, I'll be damned if I'm going to rely on people who've harassed the hell out of me to run dungeons.

Would rather stay in crap gear than get help from them, or help them in any way.

It's good to see story modes continuing, so thanks for that.

I hope to eventually see story mode dungeons for everything with the possible exception of ascended, though I'd personally like to see it for those as well.

I see no reason not to, with rewards being scaled between story and group.

Gold really isn't all that hard to obtain outside of dungeons, just a more steady gain fighting inside a dungeon rather than outside thanks to chests.

Also, as loot does change between group mode and story mode a bit, it will always be beneficial to run group dungeons when groups are available, meaning tanks will still hold value, also with so many character slots available to one account, nobody has any excuse to not eventually make a tank type character besides just not enjoying that play style.

I find it kind of sad that the main opposition towards story mode comes from people who already have their gear sets, are you so afraid of newer players catching up?