I don't see what the need is to change enchanting? Far as I know the reason was that the enchanting system was built for players without massive XP farms (according to Aikar), but I don't see how that's really a valid reason, considering most farms were broken in the 1.8 update. That being said... I don't love the 1.8 enchanting update for vanilla at all, but I don't think it's something that should be changed. Same thing with anvils... I dislike the xp cap - it was what kept enchanting fair; not having to ever make a new pick is kinda dumb IMO. I also stand by my opinion that quartz is the best way to get XP.
The balance of combating XP farms is part of the changes i'm looking to make... My goal is to make grouping up, and slaying monsters while running through the wild more rewarding. People look to XP farms because its the most efficient, and thats what needs to change. Then people who want to be able to get exp with little effort can still do so, but we want to encourage playing together and doing things rather than sitting still at a farm clicking a button (which most people are automating too). Not going to stop the afk farming, but give incentive that the farmer wants to stop it themselves and gain the exp through more fun means. But for Vanilla XP... Vanilla doesn't balance its gameplay mechanics around large influx of XP where getting level 30 takes little time at all. Combined with the custom aspects of EMC that gives bonus XP, we need to tweak the enchanting costs to bring it more inline with scale of things in how it relates to EMC's custom nature.
Making other ways of getting XP more rewarding is a great idea - I thought you meant something about reverting enchanting back to the 1.7 system (did you mention that at one point, or am I making that up?) which I think is not a good idea.
