It is time to get a 3rd free Retainer

[Claviusnex]

Are you sure they are just a UI? I was sure they are a workaround of 1.0 system and still retain the core 1.0. It is just not visible. That is why when you summon retainers you get the message no longer selling. I was not playing when retainers were hidden so maybe this is wrong. But why keep them then?

We might be thinking the same thing with just a different way of how we see the program structure. I look at the retainer as the UI to a set of processes. Retainers could just as well be a chair or a stuffed animal. The problem isn't the retainer UI concept itself but the processes they spawn. In fact I rather like the interactive character ability they bring. If my understanding is close to correct the processes the retainers spawn all run on the server side and the data structures are copied and passed around between the various servers that perform each of the different functions. This is the problem that as the retainer inventory and character profiles grow they send more data between servers clogging up the communications stack and taking up more memory with replicated data. It is straight forward to resolve in multiple ways from a high level design viewpoint and should be able to be done in stages but SE has to be willing to assign the human resources to do it. When I was still working one of the things I did on projects I led was have the team bring in problem areas with old code. It could be a problem for many reasons such as too many code bugs, poor code structure that made modification risky, poor performance, etc. We would pick one or two to fix in addition to the new functions we were adding. To me the inventory issue is one of those areas I would have said let's fix for this next release.