My first question: Are rare/legendary/epic items going to also have a higher level than their common brethren?
The reason I ask is because, I see crafted Tier 1 items are all level 6, no variability. Ok. That's becomes obsolete fairly fast, but not immediately so - it's conceivable that you'd still use a level 6 item when you're around level 8-10. Ok. But now I see that Tier 2 crafted items are all level 14, again no variability. And it strikes me as odd, because you can only use these items when you reach level 10 anyway. For the 10-19 level stretch, you want to use the best weapons and armor possible, and level 14 items are not going to be novel for very long. In my guild we're only level 12, and already two of us use level 19 weapons (rare) and one uses level 16 (rare also). There's no way in Hell that crafted items would match up to this, unless they are crafted rare. Which would take people an amount of personal investment of such epic proportions, that we'd already be way past level 20 by the time they get that 6% chance.
So my second question is, can you please, please give crafted common items some variability? Some would be better, some worse, not all crafted items are the same. In fact, give a 1%-2% chance for rare items right off the bat.
And my 3rd question is, am I the only one who thinks that, once again the artisans are screwed? By the time they can make rare items - even from Tier 1 - there'd already be a high demand for Tier 3 items, which they couldn't supply without playing another 2 months.
Sorry, I really like the notion of having two paths to choose from, but right now one of them seems hardly worth the travel