Best features of past games

[grizzle]

We don't want to go around populating individual dungeons with individual items, IMO, because I think that defeats the true focus of the game (at least as I envision it)

rare drops should never be in the form of usable items. it should all be materials....so you either sell it to your team to use to make items for them, or sell it on the black market and the enemy could end up buying/using it....ala PotBS

(ie...some sort of reagent for wizards, a sought after plant herb for potions, a type of metal with unique properties)

If every material has a usually found in X Y Z conditions, then you can have it randomly respawn in locations that meet those conditions

Ie....plant herb only grows in extremely dry high altitudes, metal only found in limestone caves

If you want to make an MMO for crafters and alienate adventurers/fighters/action oriented players, then I would agree with this. However, there are a ton of people who miss the old days of EQ, for example, with camped mobs and rare drops. These people view crafting and gathering as aspects of the game that are not fun, and when the game then tries to force those aspects on the player, where it is a necessity to spend three days (or any time, really) crafting just to go out and adventure in the world, then it becomes work and is unwanted.