Massively Live Q&A w/ GM SC - Post questions here!

You would have to think of an in context mechanism, but one obvious thought is to make it available through the library.  In the research tree, players could assign librarians to search out interesting "texts" (burn research points) and present them to you based on some sort of "Helpful" or "Unhelpful" player ranking system.  If you knew the name of the text then you could tell your librarians to find that specific text (still burn research points but get what you want).

Alliances could have their own private libraries that shared documents among members.  That would provide structure and formatting lacking in the current alliance forums.

Where the player profile provides a very rich set of HTML tools it's supposed to be our profile.  Many have hacked this to use the HTML tools to present game information but ideally that would be done someplace else.  In other cases people have done a lot with the Google documents sharing system but many players never see the results, because it's out of game.  Same can be said for HonoredMule's Wiki, etc...  From the perspective of a living world, it would be nice if these information sources were consistently and contextually tied into the game itself.

Is it or will it be possible for players without traders at a hub to lend their caravans to a hub for rental (either by the faction or directly to a trader)?  Is it or will it be possible to allow traders to rent from hub factions large transport capacity (by river or baggage train, etc...)?

Hub trade mechanics is ideal for market maker trading styles and that is perfect for high volume basic resources.  Market makers are a neat part of markets as they help stabilize market prices and allow players to depend on markets to supply goods.  Competition between market makers drives down margins and is good for lowering trade barriers.  Players that can depend on markets to supply missing resources will feel more comfortable specializing.  But, a market maker trade strategy, over the short term and with enough market momentum (steady excess supply) will cause a consolidation of trade goods that for some goods will accumulate to excess in some hubs (perhaps all hubs, but that's a game design issue).  Excess supply will crash the market and that will create wild swings in prices ruining an individual player's specialization strategy.  There is a trade demand to move large quantities of resources between hubs to match supply with demand.  Currently, a single player can move a max of 2,100,000 of anything at a time and that requires every single one of a player's caravans (10 cities, 70 vans/city, 3,000/van).  There have been 250 billion total basic resources traded.  A single hub trader can move a maximum of 0.3% of that market in a year.  For advanced resources and players with large gold reserves to trade them the problem isn't as bad and trade volume is still very limited.  But the problem can get severe even for advanced resources and that doesn't account for the tons of new resources and items rending a thinly stretched transport capacity.  Which means we would need a lot of trading players dedicating a lot of their caravans to moving goods to even attempt to address hub basic resource inequities through hub trade (higher demand in the newbie ring, higher supply outside that) and most of that transport capacity will likely go to higher margin goods leaving basic resource trade to lag.  Without access to additional transport capacity, hub basic resource excess will build, eventually driving prices to zero and making basic resources worthless (especially in outer regions).  In the newbie ring, there will remain the most steady demand for resources and no practical way to get the resources to them.  The cost to move reasonable quantities (for trade) of resources will make it prohibitive for traders to address this.  As a hub trader, what is my incentive to trade in basic resources without some means of moving them around?  The same will likely occur with herbs and minerals sometime soon as stockpiles build and people can't (or won't) dedicate the personal resources to moving them around to try and match supply and demand.

Why is basic resource trade important for Illy?  Anyone new to trading and without a stockpile of gold (established players have billions I am told) will find it easiest to start trading cheaper goods at higher volume.  If there is no money to be made by trading them, then the path to enter the trading business as a trader will be much steeper and we'll see trade monopolies build with giant pools of gold to drive out competitors and arbitrarily set prices.  This will make it difficult to depend on markets and difficult to specialize.  I believe it possible that limited inter hub transport availability will artificially assist established players to control the trade hub markets and limit newer and smaller player flexibility and choice.

Along these same lines, do you intend at any point to have the factions charge for storage to prod traders to keep goods flowing and "buy" from select markets to help draw off excess resources?  Basically stabilize (or trim) the game economy?