I was actually debating making a thread on this myself earlier. As for how it effects the economy, it means you are taking extra materials out of the world to gear up your alt characters, as opposed to just sharing gear across them. If, for example, I play 4 characters who make use of a Greatsword, I could share a single one across the four of them rather than making 4 separate ones. If we’re talking exotic 80 gear, this takes out 15 more ectoplasms, 15 more fine mats and whatever amount of Orichalcum Ore are required. But personally, I see this as extremely insignificant, and even across such a large player base I can’t see it making a notable impact. In the long run, the cost of making exotics is pretty cheap, and different professions utilize different stat combos. Even with the ability to share them across characters, I’d most certainly end up just making 4 separate ones anyway. This is, as far as I can tell, the only “beneficial” reason for Soulbound even existing.
On the other side of the coin, it feels like a punishment for those who choose to play multiple characters. Making dungeon tokens account bound is a good first step, but there is still a lot of stuff I’d never make use of that could go a long way in helping me gear up my alts until I hit 80 and craft them exotics. The occasional rare accessories I find that are immediately soulbound when I pick them up are absolutely useless to me, why can’t I use these on another character instead of having to vendor it for a silver or two? Right now I’m currently starting to build up karma and gold/materials to work on a Legendary weapon. This will take both myself and most other players a few months to complete at a minimum. I realize this is a fairly extreme case, as most players probably will never bother aiming for one, but is there a single valid reason we shouldn’t be able to use these on multiple characters? I love how the Sword looks, but as a Guardian it isn’t often I resort to using one, which puts me off such a heavy investment for it. If I could use it on my Mesmer and Thief, I’d probably go for it in a heartbeat.
tl;dr: I think Soulbound should be scrapped entirely. Anyone should be able to see the benefit of item binding as a whole, but limiting it to a single character feels more like a punishment when you could make stuff account bound instead. At the very least, I think they should consider changing the things I mentioned (accessory drops and legendary weapons). I’ll probably make a thread in the suggestions forum on this later/tomorrow if someone hasn’t beat me to it. It’d be nice to hear more input from the community or an ANet employee beforehand though.
