@MattWSpanjer,
Oh, my pleasure. Unfortunately (well, not unfortunately, not really
), I'm in grad school so i don't have the time to play. My friends are pretty excited about Delta Rising.
Plus I'm in school for social media/communications and we actually talked about game theory this week. There is a ton of literature on the subject, about what crafting, smithing, and questing systems are all about, etc., and how the gold farmer companies are trying to real-world monetize it. Fascinating stuff.
Here's one of the articles we read for class, in case it interests you.