Return of Reckoning

The ring crafting system featured in the event last year was an excellent addition to the game, not only in its rewards but also the crafting and acquiring of needed materials and the subsequent markets that developed to feed these needs. But the big deal is of course the rings which since the close of the event have been unavailable for any characters who weren't active at the time other than paying a large sum and praying the one you want happens to be available.

The value of these rings varies but they are incredibly nice to have and use in set ups and should be available to more people who either didn't play at the right time or who now are working on new characters which are locked out of these items. I get that events are special, and the items attached to them are obviously supposed to be limited to those times but usually these events are not as character influencing as these rings clearly are. Plus, it's not like we are not long overdue an alternative to genesis.

Suggestion 1: Return the event as it was again in the near future.

Pretty simple, copy paste. Everyone now knows these things are great to have and it will give a larger % of the current population access to nice items.

Suggestion 2: Permanently implement the ring crafting system into the game.

This was a good, well implemented system and the devs deserve credit for that. But why have this just to use for one offs? Not only would permanently implementing the system give everyone access to these items (maybe in future event should have less significant items as normal) but would bring back the market that sprung up around these items. At the time there was a **** load of trading going on for the materials and finally the rings themselves and I and it seems quite a few others seemed to enjoy it. Seems like a healthy economy to have under the games surface.

I think the amount of materials dropped would need to be adjusted so that it was a longer term proposition and not everyone suddenly appeared with everything, also can you please delete all the existing materials clogging up peoples banks? Unless we are supposed to have such a head start for the next event?

Anyway, I welcome discussion on this and hope to see access for everyone to these items granted in future.

There are many aspects to this, but ill try to just stay on the these two:

1) Economy.
This was one of the few times in my RoR histery where I saw activity in Player to player trading widespread and not just once in a blue moon two friends trading a Gunbad diamond, or a random player buying a stack of potions. The 3rd pillar of MMOs was actually active for a brief time during this. Now the backside of suddenly having an active economy is that goldselling becomes appealing with all of that negativity. But at that point there just needs to be a solid GM team, which I honestly think can handle RoR as a free to play project, having an active ingame economy with player to player trading fairly.

2) Availability.
The limmitation of the event made activity boom big time, and naturally those who "I cant play during weekendwarfronts or events" situations will always happen, the length and droprate can be always be adjusted to keep appeal of the event to boost the server activity, while also providing somewhat of a safetynet for those who cant play or join later (reappearing event).
For BiS items or perma build-defining equipment this is dangerous to add on Events imo. And it serves much better to do like we saw with the Liniment event where you get temp consumeables, which are still appealing to over-play and stock up on and also enables player to player trading.

I'd think relaunching such a detailed event yearly for a month or so would serve best to create availability, player to player trading. While the development side of thinks is just very cool to see newly created Tradeskill professions, teamwork for crafting, and a slight secondary realmpride enforcement by linking it to pvp with sacking enemy cities for higher tax, or simply farming the "enemy" to deny them resources for the event.
Cosmetic and consumeable rewards seem to be the way, but since this event was already let out of the bag its hard to solve the situation now without yearly relaunching this event in its current form.

I was a bigger fan of the Fellowship of the King event.