An issue that may or may not have been discussed is the problem with high level crafting and guilds. At least on Cannith/Sarlona/Khyber I've been noticing the general strategy that guilds are using is to produce a single "Guild Crafter" with very high level crafting skills. Couple this with the fact that crafting beyond level 50 is extremely plat & time consuming and is nearly an impossible task for anyone but the most hardcore gamer and I see a problem brewing.

"Elite guilds" along with their pbase drift higher and higher in the power scale relative to the more "casual/slightly hardcore" pbase which probably represents the majority of the players in DDO. Devs, may not believe this is a problem (since it's really not a technical issue but more of a internal social issue) but this "power drift" will eventually make it that much harder for devs to roll out quests balanced for their entire pbase.

Definition: A Guild crafter (from what I've been noticing) is a single shared "mule" character that a trusted segment of a guild (usually the officers who all have each others phone numbers) would level up as a team. Ingredients/essences/plats will be donated by the entire guild (at least in my guild, the officers would actually be brazen enough to give me a tell saying "Did you donate some essences/plats today?").

The benefits to this is obvious, Guild Crafting becomes a cakewalk when you split the grinding duties between 20~30 people in eleven different time zones with some 200+ other people throwing in plats/essences to give you enough mats for a dozen capped crafters. And the payoff at the end is also obvious "Hey does so and so have a harry beater?"..."Oh darn, he doesn't" ..."Hey no problem, let me get on Guild Crafter and whip him up a set of +5 Holy Burst Silver Khopesh of Greater Evil Outsider Bane Khopeshes, it'll just be a sec."

Conclusion: Crafting is great... I love it. But this such a complex system (not technically as much as the balancing issue part) that it should really REALLY have been thoroughly tested on Lam before going live. Hopefully, the devs can find an ingenious solution to all of this... because if they don't... I see this becoming a Sony's Star Wars Galaxies moment for Turbine.