I thought of a way to improve the popularity of merchant made eq.
If we had a spell (called "drain enchantment" or such) that drained the
stats from non-merchant made gear and stored it in, say, the gem on
a master merchant's belt or such, we could then use another spell
(call it "enchant item" or similar" that could place the enchantment
on a piece of merchant made eq. There would be a chance of weakening
of the enchantment though, perhaps based on the sacvalue of the item in
question, and both spells could be tied to Knowledge of Metamorphosis.
If taken conservatively initially (as most things seem to be) I think it
could end up being well balanced and pretty popular. What do you think?