Any mechanic which drives the players to seek other ways to entertain themselves while playing the game needs to die. We're already playing a game. Why should we be looking for things to distract ourselves from playing the game?

If it's acceptable for crafting to be done in AFK-mode, there should be an option to just set ourselves up to craft while we're actually AFK, like a bazaar. Or better yet, to craft while offline.

I agree that the crafting grind is currently too long to support a real system, but preserving the current length of the crafting grind is not more important than making crafting fun.