There shouldn't really be anything in the module that is "first come, first served" like that, at least not on an individual basis (maybe on a group basis but). The epic boss issue will be solved with the changes coming down the pipes for that side of things. I'll take a look at Kampo's (and any other merchants folks can think of that have one-per-reset items). There should literally be no reason to be "first" on login.

Ah, job system stuff. Yeah... unfortunately like most things with the job system, that'd be a rather large pain to try to change just that one thing.

So not to be a hardass but... if people insist on continuing to make a mad dash for the building materials merchants, then I'll just remove them and people can harvest the materials the hard way.

Adapt.

Beyond that, I know from IC interactions that there are a good amount of them, but most people don't take more than a rank or two - very few master because there is no reason to when there is "competition" from the NPC merchants. Besides, if it's somehow a disaster, we can always but them back in, or have them on a request-accessibility basis.

"The system needs to be redone as a whole"

Is it okay to wait in the character selection screen?

Its to large of a system for such a small player base as I commented in threads before, we have what .01%? of the player base of WoW with 75 jobs to their 11, and each char on WoW can max out 2 of them with a zero fail rate and continuous respawn if resources on maps and no 2min dull cool down timer , we can only max out 1 and a we need to invest a number of said points to pick the trader job to even hold the stuff we collect.

Do it now. Those merchants are killing the job system anyway. It is meant to be the "hard way".

Also, I'm pretty sure certain materials (I think it was yew) are only available through merchants, due to the areas that used to house their resource nodes getting revamped or removed.

1. "System of PC development in WoW was brilliantly designed to be intuitively obvious even for idiots." (not be me)
1.1. (after all, WoW is PvP/PvE, afaiu)
2. Get bag of holding.
3. (JS is oversimplified compared with IRL, so complains about "pesky timers" looks silly, IMHO)

4. (most important) Are there _enough_ people to support raw materials demand?
4.1. I think, space to store adequate supply of materials even of 50 slots is not enough, even with bag (box) of holding 0.2. And carry a LOT of chunks of ore/stone/somethingother is ... bit cumbersome. Carryall support (death) squads, maybe?

If you want to do your part for the stability of the server as players, wait 5 minutes before logging in after a reset, whether it's a scheduled one or after a crash. You'll be doing yourselves, and other players, a favor.