I would second this idea

If a noob can harvest the wood sprites for a day and buy a full set of dragon armor.... somethings wrong. Just try the fastest way of making money, and adjust the prices of items by that.

While I do somewhat agree with this, there has to be more considerations as well. In this example is someone can harv a noob creature all day and get dragon armor, yes it's wrong, but also consider that there are going to be separate classes in QEL. For the "manu'ers", fighting is not going to be a strong aspect, and while they will not be able to wear dragon armor (assuming), there will need to be a way that they can work on getting the things they need as well.

Again, not trying to discredit you collardhills, just pointing out that the fastest way of making money is going to be different for different chars/skills

Somewhat of a quick (but probably complicated) idea...

In a game I played before there was a quest system that the owner/dev custom built, in it there was an NPC (Questmaster) and you would go to him to get small quests (kill this creature, retrieve this item, etc). The quests were level based so that a low level didn't have to go and kill a dinosaur, or get an item from a dragon's den or something...

The items/creatures were spawned and flagged as quest when the quest is asked for, and the player must go and find/kill. Upon return to the questmaster, the player gained an amount of Quest Points (ranging between 15-60 QP's)

These Quest Points were accumulated to purchase Quest Equipment (better than normal equipment with different affects) and in this particular game the items had a "recall" flag where the owner could "recall" the equipment and it would show up in inventory.

Items could also be transferred to other players for QPs (i.e. changing registered owner of item).

Example of use:
Player requests a quest.
QM tells player to retrieve a golden figurine from area.
Figurine is spawned in a location.
Player retrieves figurine and returns to QM
QM removes figurine from inventory and gives player 25 QPs.

Player eventually accumulates 3000-5000 QPs, and purchases a Quest Sword.
Player accidentally drops sword, and uses recall, if item is currently ingame (i.e. not in a player's inventory who is offline or lost due to server reset), item appears in player's inventory.

Later, player wishes to sell sword to another player, owner pays 500 QPs to transfer owner flag to new player. (This prevents some level of scamming, loss to pk, etc)

Necessary item codes:
Quest flag (for purchased equpiment)
Quest Item flag (for quest generated item, makes item non-sellable, etc)
Owner tag (owner/purchaser)

Necessary creature codes:
Quest target
Quest Owner (person who's on the quest)

I wish I could expand more on this, but without having access to the old code base, I'm afraid there's not much I can help on. Also I have tried numerous times to obtain the code base since the game has become defunct, but current owner would not reply to messages, and creator could not be reached.