[Part A]
Crafting...
In my opinion, from the MMOs I've experienced (DAoC to Horizons to WoW to EQ2 to Saga of Ryzom etc), crafting has been completely unrealised.
In pretty much all of these games crafting has ended up being a shell of what the intention was, for one reason or another. And as such it's either ended up being a very dull and very boring grind or the process is worthless - as said, better drops so why craft?
To my thinking, the big error is really quite basic and blatant.
Look at EQ2 for example:
'Person A' starts Woodworking (WW). They go out harvesting, they then return to the crafting dungeon and level up their WW skill. Soon they're a level 40 WW and a level 9 Adventurer (like my Woodworking alt on PvP server).
This character gets one shot killed in places he needs to gather woodstuffs, but he can and does gather, and then crafts items for level 40+ people. He has no dependency on anyone else, let alone an Adventurer.
So here you have Generic Woodworker Man who can make magically imbued wands from rare wood that he himself harvested from a piece of wood.
'Person B' hates the idea of crafting. He wants to be a Ranger!
So he goes out, killing mobs and leveling up his skills. He finds Adept 1 skills dropping off the mobs so has no need to go see a crafter for Apprentice versions of the skills. He visits a crafter once in a blue moon to get an Adept 3 version of the skill made (which any generic crafter can do).
He finds nice armour, does quests for nice armour and weapons.
He gets to level 60 with only having needed to visit a crafter a few times for Adept 3 skills - possibly going back to just that one crafter in his or her Guild.
Now... the Crafter gets progressively annoyed that the Adventurer is out there getting versions of loot equal, and usually superior, to what he can craft. So he starts whining on the forums that he is undervalued and not needed in this MMO society - and the Devs told them they were going to create such a great crafting system - again...
So, the Devs then give GenericCraftedSword#2453-that-needs-a-rare better stats than the dropped loot equivalent to appease the Crafters, and soon the Adventurers are on the boards whining that the Crafters are charging waaay too much for the item - because a Crafter can go out and gather the needed rare without an Adventurer's help, and thus charge whatever the hell they want!
Starting to see how full of holes such a system is? And it's evident, in one form or another, in pretty much all MMOs.
If not that, then this:
Gather 500 wood - 3 hours work.
Gather 500 cotton - 2.5 hours work.
Gather 500 leather - 4 hours work.
Gather 500 metalA - 3 hours work.
Gather 500 metalB - 4 hours work.
Now smelt metalA and metalB to make metalC (no real point to this but see it soo often... :blink: )
Then add wood, cotton, leather and metalC. Move slider to right to mass produce 500 base items.
Press 'Craft'.
Now salvage goods from the 500 items.
Repeat 'craft' process. Savage. Repeat. Take a gun and shoot yourself for having wasted 18 hours of a day to not even gain a finished product.
I'm sure we can all give other examples.
Like WoW. Gather copper, leather and cloth. Simply look at it, say "Mumbojumbo!" and tada! Copper sword.. haha. WoW 'crafting'... :blink:
). Sharpening stones to keep your weapon in a good shape could also be craftable. As well as oils that may give a temporary buff.
