The only way that would work without a flood of bug reports and petitions would be to have a linear decline in non-fixed item drops that started with the release of Kunark, and assuming that game mechanics and drop rates were perfectly classic at release.
As time progresses (a linear function), drop rates decrease (again, following a linear decline) accordingly. The change is extremely subtle (1%/month?) so that a major difference isn't noticed, but helps mitigate market flooding and preserves something of the 'big picture' you talk about without giving the impression that a change is actually taking place.
Your first problem is going to be fixed item drops - mobs that spawn on a specific timeline with a specific amount of drops. Do you change the spawn rate on Trak so that less BPs enter the market? Do you add garbage drops (Fire Opal classically comes to mind) to account for the decreasing drop rates? People probably won't get too fired up if the occasional VS dropped a gem instead of pants, but what happens when that becomes an every-other-week event?
Will that drive off more players than if we simply maintained a 'classic' drop-rate for all mobs and accepted the fact that the p99 economy is never going to be a classic emulation? From my view, it never was; people stockpiled manastones just like they stockpiled fungis, and will be stockpiling Lodi shields and so on.
Finally, what do you do with Velious to avoid what's happening now in Kunark? You can't start with decreased drops, or people will complain of a non-classic expansion. You can't decrease drops using the linear offset because you would eventually reach the zero crossing where absolutely nothing drops. Do we simply stop caring because, unlike Kunark, Velious is the final word and not an intermediary release like Kunark?
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