...that's what's I saw items priced at for a starting bid during an auction on the prodo shard I haven't played in over two years. I have a modest 2-story and 7 mil in the bank having bought nothing and sold every sellable bag, bottle, gem and looted every mongbat I ever killed during my time there. I averaged 14 hours a day for the few 2 years, 10 a day for the next few and gradually less but it took all that time to make about 10 mil total on a mage. I used to pick up regs in Glow at server up so I wouldn't have to buy them. Oh, I could have 'farmed' gold off of blood eles with a tamer but that's not 'playing' Sad part was a few people actually bought more than one mutil-million gold item for sale. How the hell did the company that runs this game let this get so out of hand? I never understood why people who went to Siege never went 'home' again...I do now...
Umm....yeah.
This statement is key:
Oh, I could have 'farmed' gold off of blood eles with a tamer but that's not 'playing'
Why isn't it?
So this:
sold every sellable bag, bottle, gem and looted every mongbat I ever killed during my time there. I averaged 14 hours a day for the few 2 years, 10 a day for the next few and gradually less but it took all that time to make about 10 mil total on a mage. I used to pick up regs in Glow at server up so I wouldn't have to buy them.
is playing, and killing blood elementals isn't.
Your preferences aren't objectivity. What this means is that the way you want to play isn't any more "playing" than the way someone else wants to play.
IRL, some people like to bake their own bread. Of those who buy their own bread, some buy cheap bread, some buy fancy, expensive bread. Of the latter, some do it for preference, some for taste, some for health.
In-game, some people like to pick reagents off the ground, some like to kill blood elementals. Some like to kill troglodytes, dread spiders, elder gazers, etc. Once upon a time, some people only crafted. I'm only beginning to realize how much that isn't true anymore, and it's making me increasingly sad. But, still....The point is that when some people only crafted, I bet some other players whined that only crafting wasn't "playing" somehow.
There are all kinds of things to do in this game for your characters to make money, depending on whether you want to make "new money" from monsters, or make "old money" by selling goods to other characters.
What you're basically saying is, "the method I used doesn't get me as much gold as the methods others use, therefore there must be something wrong with their method."
Now I, for one, will and have entertained arguments that certain activities are "too easy," or certain templates are "too powerful." And certainly there's been far too much impact over the years from duping or other forms of cheating.
But cheating doesn't really seem to be the source of your complaint from what I could decipher.
If you love Siege so much, stay there, play, and have fun. Don't come onto a production shard and whine that other people are more successful than you are.
Your not doing as well as someone else is not, in and of itself, a sign of something wrong with the economy. Fellies often whine that Trammel is somehow Communistic. Well, thoughts like the ones you're putting forth here are far closer to Communism, and revolutionary Communism at that, than is pretty much anything I've ever heard any Trammel player say.
-Galen's player
Sarsmi's vendor house!! hehe. 
