Remove unnecessary NPCs like Merit vendors, Origins vendors...

I disagree with you completely. All you ever lose is a few seconds, but what we gain for those few seconds is a very strong sense of immersion. These are real stores, real locations in the game world that we can visit. It shows me people don't just spend all day with their shoes nailed to the sidewalk, it shows me that not everyone sells their wares out of their inner coat pockets. Pretty much the WORST thing, immersion-wise, that you can do in a game is to simply stick an NPC out in a random place in the overworld and have that NPC act as a vendor.

If a vendor has a selection of 50 swords, he's not hiding them in his bag. He's most likely keeping them on racks or in chests that I want to see. And he didn't lug all of those chests to the middle of the forest on his back. He had help. Either he had servants who helped deliver them and would still be milling about to help carry the remaining goods and earnings back, or he used a vehicle of some sort that should still be around. If he's alone in the middle of the forest, he'd need security, most likely a contingent of armed guards, or at least the obvious ability to defend himself. After all, a lone vendor in possession of expensive items is a prime target for robbers.

In-game immersion matters. If I go to a store, I want it to look like a store and have an interior. I want to see boxes of stuff on shelves, I want to see a display case of guns and grenades, I want to see magical artefacts hung on the walls and rows of old, heavily-stacked bookcases. I want to see the intricate futuristic scientific machinery, I want to see gadgets in clear plastic cases hung on racks like spares in a hardware store. I want to feel like this is a real world and the people I interact with have both their own off-camera lives and their own infrastructure set up for accomplishing the things they do.

Trainers I get. They're repositories of knowledge, so they don't really need much more than just themselves. You need to be trained, you go to a trainer, and you two go off to train. I'd like to see training facilities, but I can let that slide. But any sort of physical goods vendor cannot afford to be just alone on a street corner. Take Ghost Falcon, for instance. Ignoring the question of why a clearly technological hero is selling magical stuff, where is he getting it from? He's just one guy standing in the inside of a roundabout. Where do the Merit Vendors keep all of that stuff they give out? Who do they work for? Who do they answer to?

Pretty much everyone on the development and community team has been talking about a higher standard of quality recently. I hope this reflects in the verisimilitude of the settings we get introduced to. I don't want my contacts standing in alleys 24/7 like they're homeless. A businessman shouldn't be leaning against a lamp post. He should be in his office. A scientist shouldn't be standing next to a warehouse. He should have his own laboratory, or at least have set up a secret lab somewhere that I want to see. If I go to visit a weapons store, I want to actually visit a weapons store, not just speak with some guy in the middle of a park who sell weapons. That's not a "store," it just some guy.

I know that simply slapping a random-costume NPC in a convenient location is a cheap solution to adding a store access point, but it's also a very ugly one. I'd really want to see the developers spend the extra time, money and effort to give us more building interiors and convince us that this could actually be a real world. No more cop-out vendors, please.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

So what? I far prefer single-origin stores to ubervendors like the Elite Quartermaster that show every origin. And if you're that worried about "losing gameplay time" by upgrading enhancements, go to common IOs and don't worry about it.
Ugly, sure, but that's reason to *redo* costumes, not get rid of the NPC.

Again, special purpose NPC that *already* has a long menu of their own - it's good to keep them separated (and often near the auction house...) just to keep menus manageable.

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Boy, are you playing the wrong game.