Yeah this sounds more like "hey here's an early era tradeskill item that was added to vendors along with lots of other similar items to make long ago non-relevant tradeskills easier to do, that we removed due to a TLP reason and then gave up making it server specific because we don't really understand the implications of anything we're doing." You should remove all the animal meats and other items from tradeskill vendors as well so Live EQ can be more like TLP.
This is such a terrible decision that does really seem as if the devs don't really know how to fix things so they just leave them broken. See: days left counter in the inventory window See: character account-to-account transfers
If you hadn't messed up the vendor would the items still be being removed from the game? What has changed your mind in August to what it was in July? This just further shows the need that TLP and Live servers should be on different clients.
It makes sense to have some items like these on vendors to make tradeskills less annoying but only if they can't be easily exploited in other ways. Either the quest had to change or you remove the item. Plus it's one game so I don't understand the argument for making TLP and live separate. The only difference should be when certain zones/items becomes available. This change makes more sense for the game and is cheaper to maintain. Plus not all early tradeskill related items for the trophies, etc exist on vendors either. It's not like this one is now completely special.
