Just a quick update to say, I'm looking at extended item attribs at the moment. Hopefully I can get something rudimentary out this week as a proof of concept. I think they'll always be pa**ive buffs, whereas skills will remain the active buffs.

I love this idea!  Mercenaries would be amazing for if you just don't have anyone on at the same time as you.  Suppose you can do solo raids then.  It would make credits a little bit more useful, and perhaps the ranks in guilds as well if you have to be a certain rank to hire them.  Another idea is to have an option within the guild to build a shop or something where you've got a page where you can hire them.  Possibly all of the above!

Just had an amazing idea.  What if the guild v guild raids were limited to 5 members that can join from either side?  Then it would be a closer battle between big and small guilds.  Would encourage new guilds to keep going.

The only issue with GvG where both sides need to join is that it has to run for long enough to compensate for different timezones, but other than that it's viable with this party limit idea.

This is tangentially related to the mechanism we'll need for capturing territories imho.

capturing territories seems fun also.  didn't know you were considering that idea.  What's next a real world world map interface?

I hear there's companies selling the framework to make that on any game.