The concept of sending materials and wares by vulnerable caravans or that I need to gather materials manually is really unappealing. It reminds me of a spin on World of Warcraft and other mmos crafting with gathering skills. The caravan system seems like a lazy attempt at generating pvp content at crafting players expense.
I was always a fan of the DAOC crafting in simply purchasing materials from vendors and making them into products which feels far more realistic to me as well. Is an artisan of his/her craft going to go out and mine their own ore or are they going to stay in the city near their smithy and purchase raw materials from merchant suppliers in bulk? The DAOC crafting system had its own merits and the system talked about on the content released so far just doesn’t seem like something I would be into. I mean is there really enough content to warrant dedicated crafting characters? Is there a reason it has to be a dedicated character? Even artisans today moonlight with real jobs if the business is bad; it really makes no sense to lock them in. They seem to want crafters but really all it sounds to me like is that they will be fodder content for non-production classes in realm vs realm.
thoughts?