Why do you insist on a long grind? It doesn't keep people in the game. Look at XI - talk about a grindfest punishing game that never EVER even HIT a mil subscribers and is barely afloat now. Now look at WoW - you can craft the same item in succession automatically and somehow it didn't break their game. People still play it, a LOT more people than here (cue the WoW haters - but you can't argue with this simple fact).

Then again, they kept crafting as side jobs so the markets didn't asplode every other day as people level and capped the crafts you could learn.