Quote Originally Posted by Aniond View Post
That's is like saying. Why make 210 raiding gear only available to those who are in a raiding guild. Currently, AS is only available to one type of group, and they get the best rewards. Is it so bad that crafters finally get a piece of the pie?
That's not true. You can clear savage raids without a static raid group. There are Ls's, FC runs, PF PuG parties. Lots of people have gotten through raids without being "hardcore" raiders. It's just not nearly as easy, because finding 4 Dps who are capable of meeting the Dps without eating the floor is like winning the lottery 4 times in a row.

Regardless, Alexander Savage is available to everyone. It's just not for everyone. Same goes for Crafting. Anyone can do it (kind of... the specialist thing kind of puts a restriction on exactly how much crafting you can do on one Avi, but it's the same principle). It's just not for everyone. The difference is that Raiders dependent on crafters. Whereas Crafters are dependent on no one but themselves.

Raiding does not make you money. If anything, it costs far more then you will ever make. You fail far more times than you succeed, and each wipe has repair costs. If you really want to progress, then you have to shell out millions of gill on melded accessories. Now, if you want a 210 weapon to get an little boost, you have to pay for that too. During all of this spending of gill, you are making no gill in return. Players who raid and enjoy running dungeons do not get to make money while they do what they enjoy, but they still have to pay if they want to actually take the part of the game they do enjoy seriously.

Crafters, on the other hand, always turn a profit when they craft. They pay for the resources, sure ( though die-hard crafting enthusiasts don't even do that and gather supplies for themselves), but the finished product always nets them a profit. They control the prices, and players who don't craft are forced to either pay up or go without. The crafter, charging exorbitant prices for their items, makes FAR more than what it cost them to make, so they can keep on making more and more with escalating returns on each sale (on my server, last I checked, Kingcake is going for 1.5 mil each at a combined cost of 6 million per bundle of 4. Easy money).

It has always been this way. Zodiac weapon crafting requirements were the exact same. Melded accessories are, and have always been, handled this way. It's not that crafters are finally getting a piece of the pie. They own the pie and are charging people for the pieces they cut off from it.