This seems promising to me. However, I'm disconcerted on the lack of comment about whether upper tier gear will be craftable and, if so, what components will be used. The strong trend towards upper tier craftable items requiring raid components to make (looking at you SWTOR) has really put a nail in the lid of the coffin of many MMO's for me. I've always loved crafting, but the crafter as a second class citizen within game has always been deeply disturbing to me.
I think perhaps it's a problem of perception. It's true, many players don't bother with crafting, or if they do it's such a limited facet of their gameplay as to be statistically insignificant. But I think tying it to raiding/hardmore instances is pretty much the opposite of what should be happening. My kinship in lotro was originally crafting oriented (at launch when crafted items were worthwhile), and while it has since gotten away from the crafting focus, many members still craft items for one another. It's an essential social interaction, one that is often very useful in game as the playerbase, and our kinship, is composed of adults, many of us with time consuming jobs and families, and we don't have a lot of time to run an instance thirty times to collect whatever hides to make a cloak that we'll use for few months at best.
Perception. Is crafting perceived as for casuals? Or is it perceived as a boring element of the game that many players don't want to mess with? Or as a time sink with little reward? Are some combination therein, depending on the game you're talking about?
Personally, I would strongly argue that it should be a parallel means of gear progression that should be comparable to other avenues. Who deserves a top tier piece of gear more? The player who put in one hundred hours raiding? What about the player that put in equitable time gathering resources and crafting? Both players sunk ink significant amounts of time and effort into a game they enjoyed, a game they're paying to play. So why should one inherently have a lesser experience, one which from the outset the player knows will have significantly less reward?
Crafting as Expression
One of the most intriguing aspects of the video is the level of customization going into each item, including type, material, style, and traits with which to imbue each item. This is the singular element which all MMO crafting has lacked as of late. Though I never played Star Wars Galaxies, it's crafting legacy has certainly lived on in terms of dashed expectations with each successive themepark release. Crafting in every MMO on the market today (that I've played) is shallow and pointless at best, a resource sink/raiding side game/indulgence at worst.
Developers have a keen sense of trying to make certain elements in their games memorable. Boss mechanics, progression raids, storyline, pvp (be it arena or persistent), heck, even character [aesthetic] customization is broadly expanding in many games. (Though none can touch lotro's cosmetic system, in my humble opinion.) But crafting has consistently been the red headed step child that no single developer has known quite what to do with.
Well, frankly, I think I have the ignored answer. The answer devs probably don't want to hear because it's probably not cost effective nor the popular opinion put forth by the more vocal playerbase. Crafting should be an expressive avenue of game play completely equal to Raiding, pvp, etc as an endgame goal. It should be based upon resource gathering, exploration, and yes, time. Not time spent waiting in a queue, or time wiping on a boss, but rather time finding and gathering those resources, time crafting them into components, and then time making them into items, improving those items, adding effects/enchantments onto those items, etc.
SWTOR, by making crafting something passive that happened in the background, may have enabled many to craft, but they completely alienated a segment of the population - actual crafters. The people who want to make gear, who want to explore, and want to sit down in a crafting center, socialize with other crafters, trade resources in person, take commissions, etc, were completely robbed of that experience. Crafting in that game is a) irrelevant if you don't run instances/raids, as most crafted items of worth require such resources and b) completely impersonal and detached. Which is great if you hate crafting I guess. But some of us would like a crafting system made for crafters, not a crafting system made for fourteen year olds.
Summary (End Rambling)
I'd honestly hate to get my hopes up that this crafting system will have depth and character. I'd hate to think I might be able to go into end game content with crafted gear without being mocked as a newb. I'd hate to think that maybe, just maybe this is a crafting system for crafters, intent on creating a rich and diverse in game economy and sub play experience, a social hub, and an avenue of progression. Because when I think that, I know I might just be disappointed. I know that I probably won't receive any of those things.
But boy do I want to believe.
