Problem: Items are Worthless

[Sephr]

Personally, I can totally agree with what's been said a lot here, the lack of perishables and easy introducing new items is only going to degrade the market as we go on.

However, I think there's got to be a better solution that the absurdity of merging 512 bows (which not only makes no sense, but is also an incredibly dull grind). I'm not one to propose some radical new system, especially as I really don't feel like donating the time to it as you so generously have. However, I'm confident there's a better way of doing it.

It just feels like a system suggestion that's made by someone tailoring it to themselves and the situation they're in personally, is the main impression I get.

EDIT: I also don't agree with a bind-on-equip system being added personally, WoW's economy might work relatively well, but the crafting system is an awful example of MMO success being as it becomes near-redundant after the first 3ish months of the game, as everyone who has the items crafted already does and cannot pass them on. There's no circulation outside of the 'service' crafts such as enchanting where new items are constantly requiring new upgrades.

The suggestion of making gear available from NPCs seems good for lower levels perhaps, a decent way of removing some gil from the economy (5x is a bit steep) whilst pushing people to buy from players (although is that likely to change anything? Most people use the wards to buy everything anyway).
Given the state of gil at the moment, it might not actually be that hard to generate enough to be 5x the crafted value of an item, so introducing later items to NPCs might undervalue them in the long-run