I played a different MMO name LOTRO - Lord of The Rings Online. In that game they had dailies you could do for materials called gathering instances. Some of them you fight mobs in and at the same time you gather the raw resources you need. They could do the same thing here. It works out really well once you understand how it goes. Never had a problem with game balance and the instances were solo. Since they could only be done once a day the resources were not out of balance either. One more step you could do is make the resources you gather Bind on acquire. Then they could not be sold or rmt camped lol. Honestly what the OP is asking is to give crafting a chance up to level and let the ppl camping the mats for profit do so. These instances and the BOA I mentioned would do just that.