Quote Originally Posted by seorin View Post
Shards are mainly just a reliable source of income for RMT bots.
With Shards removed, they would find another market to charge exorbitant prices for or kill entirely. Whilst I agree entirely that Shard consumption is much faster than a typical player can replace (I liked your post) I don't think them being an RMT market is the problem. Actually, it's probably good. The Shard market is small but stable profits. Better they try and control a constantly fluctuating and highly stocked market like Shards than move into something they could quite easily control and screw for the general player base. Their presence in this market is relatively harmless as your average player can still easily make money from Shards.

The problem, as you said, is that as more and more recipes are added we're expected to use an increasing curve of Shards, yet Shard acquisition rates haven't increased. It's kind of like the cost of living issues in the real world nowadays. Prices for everything is going up but wages aren't.