Components for magic

Wasn't sure how else to title this and this is more of a question, something I'm just curious to.

How does the community feel about a mage class that uses components for spells, or the possability of using things such as shards on current mage classes to enhance elementally aligned spells?

Its been a really long time since I dealt with anything D&D related, but this comes from that. Where magic users would need to use physical components to cast a spell, they needed a tangible object to use.

I realize shards are used by the crafting classes, but what if they could be used for more, give the shards, crystals and clusters a more profound purpose in the overall game world.

This originally stems from the idea, a 'what if', the calling of Primals by Free Companies would have anything to do with using a large amount of collected crystals or clusters, to channel the aether needed to call the Primal into our plane. Its why the Beastkin use the crystals now, to use the aether in them.

While I can certaintly live without it, I just like the idea of magic being tied to something more than mp cost. Melee classes use tp to execute a weaponskill, but they're also using their weapon to make that attack happen. Mages are using mp to cast a spell out of thin air and I can understand that, say the mp is spent to call the aether out of the air to make it whatever it needs to be.

But, what if, you could enhance the effects of the spell by expending something more.

There'd be a lot to consider, such as what it would mean for crafter classes, the current prices of shards on the wards would be effected the most, while shards arent a difficult thing to acquire, for those that only play crafters it would effect them directly in a way.

Thoughts?

I prefer there will be item that enable us to imbue our weapon with elemental property....that can be made from shard/crystal/cluster

I like the general idea. Asheron's Call being my first MMO, I'm quite familiar with spell components. :)