[imported_LudaKrishna]

Another option, which has my vote, is that we take a select part of a town (or town we aren't using) and make it unguarded. For instance, we could unguard the eastern half of Britain and allow maybe a third of the building there to have vendors. This would spread them out a bit but not too much as to where players wouldn't bother checking them. Meanwhile the eastern half of brit is practically its own little town, it has a bank and shops so it could easily inspire regular activity/pvp.

I find this option/solution to be the best to fix this problem.