Hot take: Players as quest givers and story arch initiators?!
Aha! Here is a hot take, what is the difference of a quest being given by a npc or a player?
The gold always come from the infinite magical gold fauced called "the server" anyways!
So why wouldn't a player be able to open a quest and post it on the bulletin board?
It is not exploitable and not circunventable, but there is an advantage, the advantage is that the player won't be online repost the same quest 24/7 so people can rerun it again and again
So, everyday the bulletin board could have completely different quests, maybe the quest giver could get a share from the payout... the adventurer would earn less.. still it is the same amount of gold and the quest giver would spend some time crafting the quest... maybe scribing is necessary for very advanced quests.
Players who are simpletons could give simple quests: bring wood, bring iron, cut all the trees around my neighbour's freehold.
Well, woud you give quests that benefit you indirectly? You should do that, reap all the benefits, take everything and give nothing!!!
NPCs in games give the same flavorless quests everyday day for years, but nobody is benefited in anyway, just the quest runner who gets a handful of gold and a sack of boredom.
So, why wouldn't be players allowed to initiate quests?
Anyone can stop by a NPC and repeatedy run the same quest, same dungeon, same raid, same everything, everyday, over and over, for years and farm unlimited gold
Why wouldn't a player in AoC, when he reaches the highest rank in his religion, be able to initiate a very important quest or maybe even a story arch?
Why wouldn't a player, who kills 1000 players at the sea, be allowed to start a story arch at the sea where you have to fight an entire armada of ghost ships?
Why wouldn't you, as an adventurer, embody your achievements as gates for opening quests or even story archs?
The only rule would be, you can't open the same quest twice before a significant cooldown, but the more achievements you have the wider the plaetoria of possible quests you could give
If you are an amazing adventurer, with every possible achievement, you could run your own quest agency, take a cut of the payout and bring your mafia muscle to make sure everybody wins