First, I wanted to thank all of you for keeping this discussion civil. It's so nice to see, when other posts often devolving into flame wars based on minor disagreements. You folks are awesome.
Quote Originally Posted by origamikitsune View Post
Can either of you think of a way to maintain the local economies of the three cities once Ishgard opens up? Short of there NOT being a method at all for selling/buying in the city (and that means disabling player bazaars as well) it will become the economic center of the world. As people level up, they will migrate. It happened in 11 with Juno and then White Gate. If SE cannot maintain the importance of the smaller local economies, then the best thing to do is to allow one unified global economy.
Hasn't this already happened, to some degree? At least on my server, most of the players have migrated to Uldah. LL is relatively empty, and Grid is nearly a ghost town.

When they open Ishgard, I think that a mass migration is inevitable. Sellers are going to go where the buyers are located. And buyers are going to go where the sellers are located. It's a vicious cycle.

I think that the 3 main cities will probably be sort of niche markets. If you want to buy/sell low level gear, you go to one of the 3 main cities, where the low level players will be located. If you want to buy iron ore, you go where the iron ore is most easily found (LL). If you want to buy saltwater fish, you go where the saltwater fish are most easily caught (LL). If you want to sell silver ore, you can try selling it where goldsmiths will congregate, which is probably around the goldsmith's guild (Uldah).

Other than that, I think it's kind of an inevitable switch. Amineri raises a good point about players congregating where there's content, though. If they open Ishgard, and most of the upper level content is still located in the 3 cities, I assume that players will still be drawn to the 3 main cities.