I love crafting in MMO's. My favorites are:

Ryzom -- by far the bvest. You can be killed just by harvesting, and there are no recipes.

Vanguard -- good mini-game and skill progression

PoTBS -- not impressed. No skill involved, no exploration and gathering.

Perpetuum -- like Eve, it is good.

I'm only familiar with SWG's crafting system -- and I agree it should be up there at #1.  My question to those who have played the others, do you have to grind out unuseful widgets for the crafting?  I ask because that ANNOYS the hell out me.  Click and make 500 widets, sell to the vendor for a loss, get more mats and grind again until you can make something.  That's a waste of time in my opinion.  At least in SWG, I could "grind" out useful things that players would want to buy (early on it was weapon damage enhancements -- people would mail orders to me in game requesting direct sales).

A good follow-up read is a thread about your utopian crafting system:  http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/273555

The problem with NGE is that they (still?) removed durability for the items, so as a crafter you could not make a living.

Given, the system on it's own IS the best of all time, and they atleast did not change that (only that you can no longer choose the things you want)

Just sad that they destroyed a great game and made a wannabe WoW clone :( (not that I don't play WoW, but I stopped playing SWG when they destroyeed it with NGE)

Good list. No complaints here. I am a big fan of a robust crafting system. If there is nothing really to learn though i usually just skip it in a game unless it is a necessary evil like in DDO.

O yeah and worst crafting system ever.....DDO

Last point- I think perpetuum should be number 8 on this list.

Originally posted by Benedikt

Originally posted by Larsa

Definitely missing: Ryzom, Horizons (now Istaria) and Tale in the Desert, all of them candidates for a top 5 spot.

 yeah, not to mention small indie sandboxes like wurm of haven and hearth, also maybe puzzle pirates, tho i am not sure if to count that one as full fledged mmorpg

 

If YPP isn't a full fledged MMO, I don't know what is. Why would you think it isn't?

As far as the crafting system in YPP, It's good, definitely one of the better systems out there and one of my favorites for the 'ease' of it. I'd put it top 10 definitely, and is in my personal top 5, but for overall, I'm not sure it'd make top 5.

Haven't played PotBS, but all the others, in my opinion, are spot on.  Great list.

missing: ryzom and istaria

Post-NGE (2008-2009) SWG still has the best crafting in my opinion.

It's the only game where I've spend five hours in a row crafting. 

Say what you want about Raph Koster, but SWG was the pinnacle in community-building gameplay that didn't alienate anyone. I didn't craft much, but I kept a lot of crafters supplied with raw materials and never once felt like an outsider. If I needed something, I could sit in a cantina and browse craftsmen and inquire about commissioning whatever I needed.

The problem was that SOE kept trying to change the game by tacking more on instead of fixing what was broken. NGE killed it. Sony was wrong. Some of us liked being Uncle Owen.

I loved the crafting system in Ryzom. Products had statistics based on how you mixed and matched some variations of the resources. And you simply had increasing tiers of resources that improved the statistics too. I only played it briefly though (a beta, or so, I guess).

Like others, ATITD should be on this list too. It is actually quite like Minecraft. You start with nothing (well, ok, schools and universities) and build it all based on what you find and gather. It's a real niche game and I haven't really played it for years. But I will keep cherishing the past I had with it. The only reason (except that the writer didn't play it) that ATITD might not be on this list is that it's not a small part of the game, it's everywhere and all about it.

Did'nt play Fallen Earth a long time but i agree with the list, Fallen Earth has one of the best crafting in any mmo i ever played.  It was actually fun to gather material cause it allow you to build really useful stuff.

no ATITD (a tale in the desert?), research fail. There are no stores. There are no drops. You make everything. You start with collecting wood, slate, mud, sand and grass and go from there. To blacksmith a top quality hatchet, you need to literally pound a piece of metal into the right shape. Atitd has many problems but nothing beats its crafting.

I started LOL when I saw Darkfall on the list....  It is dull as hell and even the active players gripe how plain and boring it is...

SWG Pre-CU's crafting blows the rest on the list away. The unique resources and their stats played a major role. From resource gathering to factory runs, SWG had quite an innovative and complex system. To be honest, the NGE version of SWG's crafting may be watered down and marginalized by the shift of the game to a loot based economy, SWG still has the best crafting.

Mortal Online has one of the best crafting systems in MMOs - no recipies, skill and lore based levels of quality, with the result based on the materials (and amounts of materials) used.

Combine that with the fact that almost every item in the game is crafted, and MO has one of the most worthwhile crafting systems available.

Originally posted by heimer73

1)Star Wars Galaxies (Pre-NGE)

I have to agree ... best crafting system I have tried so far.

 

Agreed, nobody has ever come close.

If they would have fixed what they had instead of making NGE that game would be well on it's way to greatness.  

The way the crafting and market synced up , it was MAGIC!

I also agree that is a SCAR, so does the wife. [she says] " IT'S A DEEP DEEP SCAR!!! "

---

Originally posted by Kazara
SWG Pre-CU's crafting blows the rest on the list away. The unique resources and their stats played a major role. From resource gathering to factory runs, SWG had quite an innovative and complex system. To be honest, the NGE version of SWG's crafting may be watered down and marginalized by the shift of the game to a loot based economy, SWG still has the best crafting.

---

Absolutely true. There has never been such a dynamic and ever-changing resource system comparable to that of pre-NGE SWG. I really don't know why nobody ever made something like that. Almost every MMO has a terribly static and uninspired resource table.

I agree with the #1. SWG had the best crafting system I have ever tampered with.

The downside is that it took too much time to be on top of all the resources that spawned/despawned across all planets, and it require an extensive knowledge of how the inners worked to get that +1% that could make YOUR item better than others.

A whole game on its own, for sure.

If Earthrise had already released, it'd be right up there on that list.

Originally posted by Erikmicheal

All true... but one thing needs to be of note... The crafting system of SWG today is THE SAME as it was 7 years ago. Its more geared the way you descibed today then in the past. For instance... back in the day crafters were less dependant on other crafters then they are now.

Absolutely NOT, not even close!  SOE has made large changes in the SWG crafting systems, namely removing deterioration from equipment. They have also added significant enhancement of equipment to the menu.  Don't make ridiculous comments on this forum unless you are aware of what you are talking about.

Good list by the way although I found the EQII crafting to be overly complex and not fun.  Ryzom and Istaria also have decent ones.   Funny the most fun I have had crafting was UO.   My equipment was always in high demand there.