hopefully the people in charge of the new bioware star wars mmo will incorporate a crafting/merchant system as advanced and detailed as the one found in SWG, preNGE.
for a few years my main character was a chef. it sounds weird in retrospect, especially when most of the mmorpgs out today are combat oriented, but i actually had a lot of fun.
i was also part merchant and bioengineer. my days were spent decorating my restaurant and obtaining food resources and ingredients from players who would harvest the stuff. i would also spent a large amount of time exploring the planets, looking around for a good water spawn or a field of high quality space corn to place my harvesters. then, at the end of the day, i would do a lot of experimenting and i'd try to make the best recipe for bivoli or bespin port or mind brandy. then, i'd input the recipe to a food factory and a few hours later i'd have several crates of profitable food. the food system, after the chef revamp, i was pretty detailed, and different foods would buff different stats or abilities, and there was usually a decent demand for foods of various types.
my character was a meek and mild mon calamari... if i ran into trouble trying to milk space herbivores or if bunch of spiders made a nest near my food harvesters, i had a scout blaster and a few pistol skills that i could use to try and defend myself.
everything in SWG is horrible now, and the population issues are such that getting a new restaurant off the ground is impossible, and even leveling up a merchant is essentially impossible because of the complete lack of grind-quality ingredients, as well as a market for mid-level foods and stuff... ...but it would be great to see a crafting system like this in a new mmorpg. it would be such a refreshing change from the bland crafting found in warhammer online, or world of warcraft, for example.
