I'm a preview player but I didn't play long enough to know...
But wasn't there five star item selling all the way through that? Mind you I don't know.
And I'm not commenting for or against binding, I'm just curious as what it was like during the months where this was being tested because if this was a regular practice then, then I don't get the point of the change (and if it wasn't, then I see the point).
That's all for my question, no big need to discuss anything else, if you answer that's more than enough :D
Radiant Sun Shards for I think it was 107,500 crowns or something like that.
It was basically a way to bring down the enormous costs of CE for a while (which were over 30k Cr x 100 CE) at the time.
EDIT: Misunderstood the post!
Oh well.
Anyway, people could trade 5-star items, but they weren't around for much of the beta.
It was mostly people trading for ultra rare materials that only dropped from Treasure Boxes and Sealed Swords and Antiguas which only dropped from Treasure Boxes too.
Everything else was pretty cheap and easy to do.
I had like 1000 of every shard by the end of the preview and only played for like 40 something hours over the whole thing, drop rates were pretty high.
Selling 5-star items wasn't all that common really, since there was no market for it.
There wasn't really a market for any pre-crafted items.
Mainly just recipes and super rare materials.
The influx of players with disposable incomes ready to pay any price for shinies brought in a market akin to powerleveling alongside what is technically an in-game RMT system.
And that is why they had to take measures to stop it.
That's how I see it, anyway.