Would love to see like a Grepolis rendition of the Tribal Wars' Classic Worlds, where you could still buy gold but you wouldn't be able to use it on, say, troops or buildings, but could still buy Advisors, Olympic Games, and Event purchases, and would still have access to the Gold Exchange, coupled on top of a "Total Domination" world that ends in one of two ways: Player activity falls below 300, like the original Ending World Conditions from, say, Alpha, or it closes when any one alliance dominates 75% of the world for a straight month. Obviously it would probably end from player activity. Before the heavy golders start hating on my post: I have no problem with gold, I use it in sparing amounts myself at times, and if you farm your world you get enough of it for free, so I'm not saying this idea because I'm some "anti-golder",, as I recognize the need for a commodity in order to pay fees for upholding a large international server.
I just really think this would be a fun idea, an interesting experiment, and a good world for people who really want to sink into the logistics and numbers side of the game. I mean Tribal Wars' Classic Worlds, being run by InnoGames, probably with the same server database system, proves that they would still be able to maintain profit in the world to keep it running and probably even make a bit of profit off of us, so I don't see a financial reason against a "partial premium world", per se, and there's enough old-timers and others who would enjoy at the very least testing out these settings, and it would make for a good long world like classical Alpha which went on for approx. 3 years. Possibly not as a hero world, that way could get maximum potential new players to buy advisors such as Admin. or Capt..
Dunno, maybe there was a world like this in the years I wasn't playing (had stopped for some time, RL and all), but if not, it's some food for thought as it meets demands I've seen around the forum for a while, still generates profit for Inno, would be a interesting new style of gameplay, and could potentially make for a long term world with steady profit for Inno, as after it's been open a while there would be plenty of multi-city accounts who would be itching to pay for Captain and Administrator which would be like $5 per player per month for those that paid (or less for smart gold farmers). Again, not trying to get hate from other players for the idea of restricted gold, like I said I use it myself soooo can't get on that anti-gold train really, just thought it an interesting idea and potentially an interesting world, as pockets would still be available but would generate less gap in player growth rate.