I keep reading posts in this thread and getting the impression people think we just made a whole bunch of items limited.

Again, what happened was that an Immortal went over the Great Big Item List, and looked for outlying data points. As in, "Wow. That's one of the best pieces of gear for that wear slot, and there's 35 of them." as well as "Wow. That's pretty third-rate. Why is it limited at all?"

It's not all opinion. There has been a surprisingly (to me) sophisticated set of guidelines in place for some time. We recently updated those guidelines to account for more possibilities. They're followed to get an initial guess, and then adjusted further for intangibles and unique circumstances.

So, some items are less prevalent. Other items which were inexplicably rare are now more common. It's not a big deal. I've been doing similar stuff with NPCs and carried coinage (and other variables, like how hard they hit). Some mobs have less than they used to. A lot of mobs used to have 0 and now carry a 'normal' amount. (Some authors essentially didn't give any of their NPCs any copper, even merchants and similar people.)

This stuff goes on all the time. You're noticing it now because we're being more vigilant about it and it's moving at a faster pace. But it's not moving in a new direction.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com