Would this be a cool way to stimulate trade?

[MonadRebelion]

Make all items with reaper and mythic bonuses bind on equip. A lack of good loot that binds on equip and the duping fiasco from a few years ago killed trade. Maybe something like this could give trading new life. Maybe SSG could get a little extra money from shard sales. I saw an item the other day with 3 types of reaper bonuses on it. I bet someone would pay a pretty penny for that. Anyway, items with reaper bonuses and +4 mythic bonuses are rare enough, it seems to me, that allowing us to trade them wouldn't make the player populace awash in these items. We are already awash in +1/2 mythics, so I don't see people trading those much.

[Draxani]

I think the problem with that is that now every named item found in a chest can be mythic. This means that people would be able to trade items that are typically BtCoA and BtAoA, which includes almost every non-crafted epic level item and also raid gear. Being able to trade items such as a SoS, Quiver of Alacrity, Pinions or ELitanies would be pretty unbalancing for the game.

Another problem would be that it could make certain BtA items BtCoE, which would be rather annoying. One of my favorite parts of items from packs such as Trials of the Archons, Devil's Gambit, and ToEE is that I can move them between characters. Rather than having multiple copies, I swap items like Elemental Bloom, Divine Artillery, and the TOken of the Proven to my characters as needed. This would greatly lessen the appeal, as well as remove the greatest feature of the Shared Account bank (the ability to trade BtA items between characters), as some of the best stuff to store in the Shared Bank is my mythic BtA items that are rare and I don't have more than one of.

While I agree that trading is a lot less popular, I think the main problem is twofold:

1: People (at least on Cannith) don't value plat anymore, as many of the long-time players have 10+ million plat, plat is only a valuable trading method if others want it, by itself the only things that are done with it are the negligible costs of scrolls and other consumables, as well as repair. The new reaper cosmetics may serve to help by taking a bit of the inflated plat out of the system with the high costs for cosmetics, but it is still a dead system.

2: Many of the recent updates have featured content with more powerful items and gear, and the only truly good items are BtA or BtC, and non-tradable, meaning that for a optimized character, little to no trading is needed or even recommended. Possibly the only valuable tradable items in the past updates are slavers mats.

All in all, I think the problem isn't the ability to trade currently existing items, but rather the lack of useful tradable items.

[MonadRebelion]

I think the problem with that is that now every named item found in a chest can be mythic. This means that people would be able to trade items that are typically BtCoA and BtAoA, which includes almost every non-crafted epic level item and also raid gear. Being able to trade items such as a SoS, Quiver of Alacrity, Pinions or ELitanies would be pretty unbalancing for the game.

Another problem would be that it could make certain BtA items BtCoE, which would be rather annoying. One of my favorite parts of items from packs such as Trials of the Archons, Devil's Gambit, and ToEE is that I can move them between characters. Rather than having multiple copies, I swap items like Elemental Bloom, Divine Artillery, and the TOken of the Proven to my characters as needed. This would greatly lessen the appeal, as well as remove the greatest feature of the Shared Account bank (the ability to trade BtA items between characters), as some of the best stuff to store in the Shared Bank is my mythic BtA items that are rare and I don't have more than one of.

While I agree that trading is a lot less popular, I think the main problem is twofold:

1: People (at least on Cannith) don't value plat anymore, as many of the long-time players have 10+ million plat, plat is only a valuable trading method if others want it, by itself the only things that are done with it are the negligible costs of scrolls and other consumables, as well as repair. The new reaper cosmetics may serve to help by taking a bit of the inflated plat out of the system with the high costs for cosmetics, but it is still a dead system.

2: Many of the recent updates have featured content with more powerful items and gear, and the only truly good items are BtA or BtC, and non-tradable, meaning that for a optimized character, little to no trading is needed or even recommended. Possibly the only valuable tradable items in the past updates are slavers mats.

All in all, I think the problem isn't the ability to trade currently existing items, but rather the lack of useful tradable items.

Seems like there is an easy solution to your first problem. Just make it so raid items and maybe a select few others aren't tradbable. Personally, I don't think there is a lot of raid loot out there anymore that is so great it would be unbalancing to trade it. However, there is a "raid loot is bind to character" principle that people are really attached to. So be it. Make an exception for raid loot and the issue is over.

Your second problem doesn't seem like a big problem to me since all of the non-mythic/reaper loot will keep its regular bind status. You'll still be able to pass common versions of the item across your account. Of course you will be giving up the ability to pass the rare versions of loot, but that strikes me as a minor loss for a big win. If you don't see it that way, then I suspect we've struck bedrock in terms of disagreement.

I think we are in complete agreement over the root of the problem currently. The past few years worth of gear/rewards have left trading behind. All recent gear is bind to account and the only materials that seem to be highly desirable at the moment are slavelords materials. This means you can trade slavelords materials for... slavelords materials? One of the virtues of my suggestion, I think, is that it would create a lot of tradable items quickly without developers having to churn out a massive amount of new items along with new content from which to acquire it. It looks to me like a quick easy way to stimulate trade.

[Mofus]

I would not agree with this, I'd like to see it stay the way it is.

[Gremmlynn]

1: People (at least on Cannith) don't value plat anymore, as many of the long-time players have 10+ million plat, plat is only a valuable trading method if others want it, by itself the only things that are done with it are the negligible costs of scrolls and other consumables, as well as repair. The new reaper cosmetics may serve to help by taking a bit of the inflated plat out of the system with the high costs for cosmetics, but it is still a dead system.I've found that crafting took a big bite out of this, from both ends. More loot getting deconstructed rather than vendored keeps down the influx of plat. While players buying up items, shards and collectables on the AH cuts into those surpluses as well as pulls plat from the game via the AH cut.

[Arch-Necromancer]

I think that most bound to character items need to be converted to bound to account so they can be stored in shared bank and pack mule characters.

Bound to character should really be reserved for raid loot and some select higher level items that are considered too powerful to share between characters on same account.

Most bound to character items do not fit these categories so there really is no need to keep them bound to character. I think that loot updates should also make most items bound to account instead of character.

And those that are considered safe to trade would be bound to account on equip. Those that would cause unbalance would become bound to account on acquire.