[loramin]

You have to remember, DikuMUD (which EQ was largely based off) didn't even have tradeskills, so the very idea of having them in EQ was seen as new and controversial by the Verant devs. They were afraid that players crafting stuff would trivialize players killing stuff, and so they made tradeskills mostly useless.

Over time, as the player base complained, they started to embrace tradeskills more and more with each expansion. It eventually go to the point where, when they made their first non-EQ game (Star Wars Galaxies), maybe half the game was tradeskills!

But, back in classic, they really weren't a key part of the game; they were a tentatively added (almost) afterthought.