In any game there are some tedious chores, but there's a line that when crossed, gradually drives players away. The two primary sources of tedium are travel and muling. If it takes forever to do either, that's bad. Neither have been particularly bad in PG (some classes could use a speed bump), but muling has taken a big nosedive since the move to Steam because it's no longer simple to have two accounts logged in on one workstation.

Developer goal is probably to have specialization & storage isolated among characters rather than players having one character that specializes in several crafts and other characters on the account storing items for that main player. That's counter to the natural inclination of most players.

So unless I'm missing something - which is entirely possible - the options become one of the following:

1. Loading VM software on my laptop and running a 2nd machine that way. Cumbersome, but may be forced to.
2. Running two computers when I play - which means not playing in my recliner the last couple hours of my day anymore - insert huge sadface.

or

3. Devs & player community share ideas on making muling efficient again.

or worst of all

4. Walk away from the $350 we spent on PG game packages, stop playing a game we (wife & I) enjoy aside from this muling thing, and find something else. Because it is trending as a show stopper. I was enjoying a couple hours every night prior to Steam. After moving to Steam, I'm logging in to pay vendor rent & wishing I didn't feel paralyzed. I hope this can be addressed.