Before 3.3, the only gear which could be melded with materia was crafted gear. Melding the materia into a piece of gear typically is done by the same crafting class that made the gear. The system was good and it made sense. Now, however, end game raid and token gear are coming with materia sockets. As these gears are not crafted, we shouldn't have to hunt down a crafter in order to meld materia into them. Simply put, what was previously a sensible system now no longer makes sense for the current gear. I get that finding a crafter is more of an inconvenience than anything else; however, doing away with the crafter-only restriction makes complete sense now that we're getting meldable gear from alexander and lore tomes.