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This was when the spell/skill-point grand market was started. Players could sell future skill points for spellbooks they didn't have. This effectively lowered their total skill point ceiling meaning they could never learn the final spells.

While there was some shady business like selling spellbooks to the wrong classes, or selling fake bullshit-job spells, overall it allowed great spellbook proliferation. Where previously you had to rely on a friend to cast a spell for you, now you could just do it yourself.

Players who were orphaned from their guilds could also have access to mentors and teachers in the form of these books. Usually they were from war torn regions where their framework of magic was fully destroyed.

However, this led to weakened community which cascaded over generations into a society built up by individually relationship-weak families. Since these networks were the original method by which spells were learned, the broken families drove the younger generation to the market.

The market acted as a surrogate teacher with good intention. Like any system though, it was incapable of imagining a better world where things were better when not part of the system. The more the market grew, the more it justified itself needing to grow.

The Old Spells are dying. Those who can still cast them are dwindling. Many have the knowledge, but not enough MP to demonstrate. They ask us to believe without proof. They ask us to have Faith in Wisdom and so drive away all the students.

The system is inherently self-destructive as Love will always dwindle to 0 over time within a closed system It's only saving grace is that as magic dwindles the Touch of God events occur more often due to the increase in Death/Pain/Fear.

When an old system's fractures cause it to blow open, the old system finds itself within and so becomes, a larger system. This is the "Death and Rebirth" spell which returns to you all your skillpoints to re-allocate. You also lose all your classes so you have to pick them again