Alright, so I haven't logged in for quite some time (haven't played in close to 5 years and logged in a couple years ago) and decided to today for a brief moment in time...
1: Just about all of my equipment says that it is either character or account bound upon equipping... does this mean once I equip it, I can no longer sell it? Bug/glitch? Or has the game gone that far into item mall items?
A while ago the bound and locked update was implemented to help cure the inflation of items in the free market.
Anything bound, can be bound, anything locked, is your forever. Except to NPC's, they'll supposedly take something no one else can ever use and sell it.
You can purchase item unbinder from the IM and Valor shop [PvM]. The unbinds are 100 Valor each which is a very small price.
As others have said, you can get approximately 120 Valor in a completed dungeon. And with a competent team it'll only take 7-10 mins.
Additionally, if you have a movement speed set, you can complete the Junon Shout quests from the Faction NPCs. I used to do this and I'd farm about 3-5k Valor in a given day. But it only takes you about 3 runs to get an unbinder if you use your valor passive.
2: Storage tabs... I noticed that there are more tabs for storage such as character? What is character storage? A special storage tab that only that character has access to whereas the main storage is sharable on the entire account?
You'll have
Storage: Accessible to all of the characters on the account.
Character Storage: Accessible by the particular character only.
Item Mall storage: Accessible by all characters on the account and automatically expands. Also has an unlimited storage capacity.
Premium Storage: Accessible by all characters on the account, requiring a premium service active. Additional benefit to this storage is it [and all others] can be accessed from anywhere in the world at an time by pressing 'p' while you have the premium service. [Note: Once your premium service expires, you can still withdraw items from the storage but can no longer place items inside of it until you renew your service.]
3: Skill/stat resets? Are these unlimited now or do I just happen to have a skill book left over that it shows up as a skill? Or is it just a one time use?
Those skill resets last for 24 hours of logged in time and are unlimited use. Meaning if you're online with the character for 5 hours and log out, then log in three days later, you'd still have 19 hours left on the reset. These are given out for free whenever a classes core balances are changed via an update.
4: has PvM gotten any better for the solo player or is it still majority party?
It's still majority of the time party based. However botting is still as issue.
5: Holy inflation... I see this never got fixed either... (not a question just an observation of something I don't think will ever calm down)
You'd be correct. After the server merged, the total zulie and item stocks of both Leonis and Draconis were combined.
I only logged into my account to check things out didn't really have the time to get into playing at all which is why I am bound to have further questions... so much has changed since the days of pre-evo and even the p2p era...
Thanks in advance for the answers... and of course... any words of wisdom with all the changes...