Grim Dawn has trade for coop. They didn’t take off because they didn’t make dedicated servers. They sold fairly well considering the size of the company. Well enough to fund them creating a game in a different genre that they seemed more interested in making. If they do make GD2 they’ll need a much better engine and dedicated servers imo.
Wolcen’s failure was not due to trade. they had MUCH bigger problems such as barely any improvements in the year post launch and a massive exodus of key developers.
With that said, I am definitely worried for LE and I think they’ve made huge mistakes with their big statement on trade. It came across as a pretty strong indictment against any kind of robust economy. And so while just having gifting for 0.9 isn’t an issue, it became one when they posted a blog essentially closing the door on any robust economy.
I would have felt a lot better if they instead stated that gifting was their implementation for 0.9 but that they were open to revisiting trade in a larger scope after feedback from 0.9. But between the blog post and weekly streams, there really has been no reason to hold out any hope in that regard.
https://forum.lastepoch.com/t/item-gifting-development-update-from-our-principal-game-designer/51175