This idea may have been suggested already, and if it is, feel free to flame
because yes, I was too lazy to search the news before I posted this.
People don't like global prots on eq mobs in general. And I would agree,
anything outside of your control that stops you from being able to do a mob
isn't a good thing. It potentially (although I wont speculate on whether this
happens in practise) allows a few groups of people to almost monopolise a mob.
But what is the alternative? I would like to suggest one, it's controversial,
but hey, what's ideas-wanted without dumb suggestions!

Mobs with global prots should have the global prot removed, a personal prot
put in place if they do not already have one, and their eq (or atleast, the
good stuff) made only usable by it's creators. Now, obviously this would let
more eq into the game than currently, the day after group A goes and kills the
mob, group B could too, however, if group B is good enough to kill the mob
aswell, shouldn't they get the eq? If the primary concern is that the mob
could be repeatedly killed, and it's equipment sold to people who spend all
day grinding cash with their level 45 ranger, then the name requirement would
certainly stop that. This might draw comparisens to WoW, but if it would work,
who cares. Maybe I am missing some of the reasoning behind the global prots
though, I don't know. I do know however that this would not only allow more
people to experience the higher end eq mobs, but if the 'mid-range' eq was
also treated similarily, it would encourage more people to go and see some of
the earlier eq mobs that generally find themselves farmed by 3-man highbie
parties. Why try go make yourself a +3 dodge bracelet when you can buy one
from sales with one day worth of cash grinding after all.

Now, I'm sure this idea has flaws (and no doubt you'll all flame me and
explain them in explicit detail), but mostly I would just like to start
discussion. What other alternatives might there be? Are any feasible. I know
atleast that any change would be really big, and really hard to impliment,
since as Shinarae has said in the past, every wizard codes his own prot
methods, so I imagine it'd have to be up to the individual wizards to change
their own work if they felt so inclined. Maybe atleast though this might serve
as inspiration for future work the wizards do, and I'd be happy if even a
couple of them gave this idea a moments thought.

I'd just like to add a couple of points.

Firstly, I've always felt that the trading of equipment in quite a nice
part of games such as Batmud. I feel that it allows all sorts of
possibilities and prevents the need for players, including groups of
players, to independently go and make each bit of eq that they may
find useful. I.e. I think that trading equipment is a key part of the
game.

In a similar vein, I can see that a global prot/limit of some sort
upon certain features of the game also has a real role. There may
be some problems with competition for eq and other features (perhaps
quests or easy cash/exp making opportunities), but the alternative
appears to be that players, and/or groups of players, would have to
have their own versions of areas/quests etc. So, my question is:
how far it is reasonable to go down the route of personal versions
and prots?

I think that I would prefer to see any perceived prot/availability
issues solved by a combination of more opportunity to make eq
and a lessening of the benefits of raping easily made equipment.

For what it's worth, I would prefer to see more equipment with
name dependent, in some manner, limits upon equipment use rather
than absolute requirements for using named equipment. For example,
a powerful magical item may require a minimum player level for its
use, and this level may be dependent upon whether the item has a
players name or not.

A second suggestion I have is to introduce more tasks/quests that
may be used to offset costs of various sorts (mainly guild level
costs), so that higher level players rely less on selling easily
made eq to fund reincs and other activities.

Of course, neither suggestions attacks the larger challenge of
how to cater for a player base that includes brand new players
and players with several years of game time, which, I believe,
is the primary factor that effects how different pieces of eq
are perceived/values and how exp, cash, eq, quests etc are
performed.