I hate crafting!

There!  I said it!

Of all the MMOs I've played, of all the levels of various characters I've journeyed through, I have spent very, very little time crafting anything.  And this is primarily because a) its boring, and b) I fundamentally disagree with how most of it is handled.

Before I go on, I'll wave my get out of jail free disclaimer and state once again that all this is IMHO and there may indeed be a game or games out there that do things differently, and do things well.

But first up on my list of criticisms is: I do not believe leatherworkers should make magickal items.  Or indeed armour smiths, or swordsmiths, or basket weavers or the knitters of novelty tea cosies.  I don't care what your chosen material is.  You should not be able to natively produce a magickal something, just by stitching a few bits of leather together - for example.  Provide magick with the mystery it deserves and provide a particular crafting profession with the ability to imbue magick into physical items.  You could even have such 'workers of magick' specialise in imbuing specific types of magick into items.

The next thing you do is, make creating a complex item the work of several people.  If you want to make a magick sword, have it require a swordsmith to make the blade, a leatherworker to make the grip, a gemcutter to help in the creation of the pommel and a runecrafter (or whatever you want to call those 'workers of magick') to imbue the blade with spells.

On his own, the swordsmith might be able to make a very good sword.  And this is where my notion of non-magickal bonuses come from.  I like the concept that in a fantastical world certain materials provide innately some degree of non-magickal effects.  i..e for want of an example - a sword made with silver provides a non-magickal bonus when used against werewolves (due to some kind of allergy lycanthropes have to silver).

In crafting several different aspects combine to create a masterpiece.  Firstly we have quality.  This is a basic description of how skilled the crafter was at producing that particular item.  And for something like a sword we can say that a high quality sword is durable and well-balanced and can provide the wielder with some non-magickal bonus in using it.

Secondly we could have an aspect of ornamentation.  How exquisite an item is, i.e  a measure of the artistic aesthetic that has gone into the item's creation, including the use of exotic materials and / or ornate workmanship.  Ornamentation could in some cases actually go against the effective use of the item.  i.e. in the case of a ceremonial sword - but greatly increase its value.

And thirdly we can include the arcane contribution.  What magickal powers has the item been imbued with.

Thus a complex or intricate item might require four or five craftsmen collaborating to create it.

But this is only one side of crafting.  The aspect that really bores me is the yawn-inducing acquisition of the raw components followed by the soporific assembly of watching a typically painfully slow progress bar whilst your avatar twitches their hands next to a forge like they're fiddling with a rubix cube.

Take this stuff offline I say.  Take a page out of Eve's book and reduce the amount of progress bars your players have to watch by letting characters perform some of these more passive actions offline. This also makes a bit more sense to me, and kind of provides characters with a sense that their professions are like a hobby to them, and whilst they're not out adventuring (i.e whilst you're not online actually questing and killing stuff) the character is sat by a fireside somewhere, working on some impressive new piece of equipment.

The next thing that should be said of crafting is that the items made should be better than the majority of items found at that level.  If people are going to go to the trouble of sourcing a bunch of materials and collaborating with a bunch of other players in order to craft some especial item, it better be worth it.

I'd then go as far as creating a specialised form of marketplace, a la Auction Houses, to provide players with a simple interface for finding other crafters with whom they can collaborate.  This 'crafting house' should also provide an interface for the actual creation of items.

What do I mean by this?  Well, instead of having standard recipes that produce dozens of the exactly the same type of item, allow some room for creativity, and allow players to craft items they actually need / want.  In the creation of a sword for example have the swordsmith craftsmen choose from a selection of blade types / styles in order to get the form of the sword they desire.  This can be little more than an aesthetic decision in most cases, but that is still very important to many players.  The graphics of the game should allow for many different blade/hilt/pommel combinations and the swordsmith should be able to choose the design they are about to smith.  Of course we may restrict the working of rare or difficult materials to higher level craftsmen, but have a rationale behind it.  Gold is soft and easy to work, but a gold sword will not keep its edge and should be nothing more than ceremonial... for example.  Apply restrictions to fantastic materials with innate bonuses, they're generally easier to apply a rationale to anyway.

Allow crafters to imbue items with spell-like capabilities, not just stat bonuses.

Another thing that really annoys me is when the majority of items in MMOs provide just simple stat bonuses to the wielder.  Now whilst useful, it lacks imagination.  Yes provide for stat bonuses, but also provide for spell effects.  Flaming swords which cause additional heat damage, or staves which slightly reduce global casting time, or any other kind of item which provides bonuses to spell effects... i.e. a witch-skin pouch which doubles the casters warlock armour value.  That kind of thing.  But providing players with this kind of freedom we allow players to tweak virtually every aspect of their character.