Once you have a few ranks in CoF you will have comparable quantity and quality of items drops as the current game.
Read that again. For that to be true, the current drop rate and quantity are going to be decreased.
Edit 2: I see from the following posts which I missed, that it’s understood already that the drops rates are being nerfed for the trade faction. I’m sad that I’m guilty of a behavior in others that always annoys me. But I’m also chuckling, because when I mused a couple months ago that this was likely to happen, there were multiple folks, including EHG Mike that pointed out there were no plans to do that.
Edit 3: EHG Mike never said there weren’t plans, he said the opposite. I’m full of shit.
That means that if you are going the trading route, your drop rate is permanently decreased from now. A perhaps pessimistic way of looking at that is, if you go trading, you must trade.
Edit 1 (I got the number wrong, this was first Edit): I didn’t make the italics part harsh enough; “you must trade” means you must spend every moment of your play time accumulating enough … let’s just say ‘gold’, so that you can afford to buy the items that you want to make a build. A significant portion of your playtime will be spent buying and selling. Looking for deals, buying low/selling high. Will this game have enough players to support that playstyle? I have to admit, I am pessimistic.