Hopefully, this will not come off as whining for a silly reason.

The idea you posted, about letting items get boosted in exchange for more
copies, gold, and exp, runs counter-intuitive to the way this game is supposed
to function. Gold and exp are found by mortals in increasingly large
quantities, typically by grinding exp and cash monsters with relatively small
cost in terms of resources (you don't need a powerhouse 9-man to do exp, for
example, and most exp runs have few to no deaths -- that's the point). Eq is
the big thing left that requires a lot of work to actually acquire, and, in
general, better eq takes bigger, more talented, higher-level parties to get (I
said in general, yes there are exceptions).

Now, let's say there was a midbie who could get a specific +3 spr item without
a great deal of difficulty. According to your idea, he could spend, say, eight
copies of that item, 8M gold, and 800k exp to get that boosted to +5 spr (and
that's including the 50% fail/dest chance). That would only encourage him to
go back and to the same monster over and over, as well as grind some exp and
cash (possibly by selling other low-level eq) rather than build up and go to
for a monster that has an actual +5 spr item, which a midbie probably
shouldn't have (a monster that carries a +max item is not really supposed to
be killable by a midbie party). This lets the player get eq he's not really
ready for, in exchange for resources he can get without a great deal of effort
or risk. It takes time, and saying "I deserve better eq because I've played
this game a long time" is like saying "I deserve to win the Olympics because I
trained really hard".

Things get more hectic once you take into account monster anti-abuse prot. If
the monster doesn't have it, and everyone goes back to kill it over and over,
it'll have it soon, and that'll make quite a few people unhappy. If it does
have it, the monster finds itself forming a queue as players who used to kill
it just the once now need half a dozen kills -- and there's only so many
reboots in a month.

But the specific item you used as a suggestion makes me even more concerned.
You talked about upgrading a +max item to +overmax, in exchange for more
copies (and a few other things). If there are +max items that are so easy to
get, you're willing to sac a handfull of them, there's probably something
wrong with the monster/item power ratio. Even if there was not, I'd hate for
the player chain-killing the monster for several copies of the item to crowd
out players who just want the one to actually use. There are an increasing
number of players/parties who are ready for "the big time" going after
monsters with +max eq. I don't really want to further crowd that stage by
making players already at "the big time" to hog the spotlight. Further, the
idea of a maximum limit on any one eq's bonuses is to create an overall power
limit on the game. Right now, for example, many (if not most) spells and
skills are based on realistic stats mortals can actually get based on race,
guild, and eq selection. If that limit were to raise, it could cause
across-the-board downtunes, damaging the play of everyone, +overmax items or
not. You've seen it before, it's not pretty.

And all of my concerns are based on the assumption that you could only sac
items that had your name on it. Can you imagine if you could sac non-named
items you bought? I don't want to see that.

I am worried that this looks like an idea to get either more power without
doing more work, or else permanent name bonus on items as if they were
low-level items, just because the items are too easy to get. Neither of these
should be valid reasons for such a tune. If, and I say this "if" is a very big
stretch, if such an eq-boosting thing were to be implimented, there would have
to be major restrictions, including:
-- the item can be boosted one step, and that's it forever
-- boosting would require, in addition to everything else, the sacrifice of
valuable, non-renewable resources. I would normally suggest TPs, but as we're
opening donates, I don't like the way that would sound. So I'd say instead
things like "permanent guild/race blocks" or "mandatory game banish for X
months".
-- +overmax items would require a truly daunting task, something along the
lines of "be one of the top 20 players" or "complete 20 IMPOSSIBLE! quests per
item".

Shinarae Lluminus