The other end of this spectrum is what they did in 1.0:

* Shards flowed freely from nearly every creature you killed *and* you could gather a bunch.

The end result was that Shards were so abundant it *killed* any Bots / RMT. Even people who didn't craft had plenty of Shards (Clusters were rarer of course). The prices were super low, and it basically made it so Shards weren't an "issue" when you wanted to try Crafting or just selling / trading a bunch to LS / Friends, etc.

By making Shards such a pain to gather, it's ironically allowed RMT / Bots to thrive: Because it's SO TEDIOUS those with "Unlimited Time / Manpower" (i.e., RMT hoards or Bots) have the advantage and many regular players just resort to buying them off the Market Boards at high prices (compared to 1.0).