a number of ideas with more coming!

no no.. the point was saving it with a different header, one that if you just renamed it.. it wouldn't work at all, and the game wouldn't run... something that uploading it, the server would 'translate' and put in... as to avaoid corruption... plus it wouldn't be availible to players.. only m/gms

You'd still what date protection on the sectors though... if someone updated something in your sector while you were working on your version.  But, I really have some issues with such a system.  For example, I like to work in small batches.  Having been around as long as I have, I know what a pain it is to screw up something by accident and have to start all over again or try to repair the damage done from the screw up.  Thus, when I map edit, I'll upload a little at a time... draw out the floor - upload - build the walls - upload - add the second floor - upload - add the roof - upload.  I have found it works best for me, so an offline editor that uploads in one big chunk would not be idea for that.

Quest:
I had an idea that maybe there should be a trading cart that goes between valour and fishburg... and you have to go with it in a team of like 3-4 people... as a quest, to protect the trading cart from Bandits and all of the wild creatures along the way... and yes this would require new art, But... you could have a couple, like one going from town a to town b (the.. new.. towns ) that acts as a traveling NPC like Frodo from last client.

NPCs:
As for NPCs... Jimmy, i believe that Spectre or Mumblee could do it themselves if they felt like it... but player owned NPCs should come back. Player owned NPCs serve as part of my idea for the new town being worked on atm... like a market place area of player owned NPCs.

NPCs should also be able to Follow people... and if they die, they respawn at their original standing spot. This way, we could have rescue missions where we have to go into like a mine that collapsed or like hell mines and save a miner trapped in by monsters... we have to lead them out the correct way and protect them from monsters and such.

The main problems with moving NPCs to protect is how to make the NPC move.  Does it follow you?  How does it handle pathfinding.  What if you die?  There isn't an event system, so the script would have to loop and check stuff.

Also, player-owned NPCs would more or less need to be hard-coded in with the current scripting.  I can only concieve of one way of making it work and it would involve some really ugly code.. plus, it would be an instant exploit since it would repair items to full each time... thus, yes, it would have to be hardcoded into the server.

hmm My thoughts on player owned NPC's where that you stuck items on them that players could buy off.

Recall, however, that last client people started using their NPCs as banks by putting up items and rediculous prices like 1,000,000,000,000 gp so that they could store the items and not worry about bank space.  Also, with the current scripting system, there's no way to do merchant player-owned NPCs without hard-coding something into the server.

If they did come back maybe have it so they cant sell over 500% of what the items set price, and only do a max 5 items at a time, then people would really use them as banks. Maybe you can do them as traders which can do more then one player, to about 5 or so.