People that played a while have looms anyway, especially if they are in a clan. At this point all they serve to do is make newbies weaker. Devaluing loompoints by adding more into the ecomony should make it easier for players without looms to get their hands on some, i don't think it makes people who already have some looms stronger, just gives them more variation of gear they can use..you can only use so many looms at a time per character. I do think the concept of looms is kind of bad for the game in some ways but they give players long term rewards and goals that might not be there otherwise. Also the devs have gone some way to give better diminishing returns on an heirloom so +1/+2 is better than before
If people are sad because they lose their lvl 35's, they will be sad because they lost some advantages they had over other players. This isn't a good reason to keep high level characters in the game imo. The gap between full heirloom/lvl 35-36 and newbie/guys that retire is too much. It also makes it so people don't want to try different builds, or to retire. This exacerbates the issues - if the cap was 31 more people would retire - fights would be quicker and more player skill based and more fair even for newbies. The people that choose not to retire won't be as strong as before, but with a lack of goals may decide to try different builds or get more looms
I wouldn't mind seeing more done with heirlooms though, maybe some base equipment buffs with less of a bonus from looming. Or some cap on how many you can wear at once, or some downsides inbuilt. We need to keep long term goals in the game though, so they need to be something people want to get. Retiring could give you some more of a bonus too besides loompoints, but not character based (titles, slightly less repair costs or something)
