In order to get the economy infrastructure in shape, we need to look at how much impact the economy have today. The answer is very little. A well-developed economy would have huge impact on the rest of the gameplay and we would suddenly see a much wider variety of businesses on Atys. Now how do we do this? First we need to look at the market. We players can sell our items at the local vendors and then we forget about them. If the market got more advanced it would attract more attention; and by advanced I mean things that would enable players to adjust prices on their items on-the-fly, remotely see prices in other regions, being able to sell bulk loads of items, possible even see the price development over a given amount of time.
This kind of implementation would spawn an entirely new side of conflict in Ryzom; namely the non-lethal act of business warfare. Guilds fighting each other on the market with best/lowest prices or best quality items, would force the guilds to focus more on a specific side or branch (this would work better if crafting specs for item increased, e.g. more mats per item).
To top it off, the implementation of guild war would be the crowning of it all. If a guild could declare war on another guild, they could possible disrupt the other guilds income of mats etc. A guild war would mean no place would be safe on Atys, and the war would have a weekly costs of X amount of dappers (safe zones would however be needed inside cities of course).
Ideas and thoughts on the above are most welcome.
