I wish crafting was more casual-friendly

I really like WoW's crafting system, especially since the overhaul in Dragonflight. The process of collecting recipes and converting mats into items is fun and cool, with lots of little optimizations and opportunity for discovery and dopamine.

However, the system has this kind of fundamental paradox: you think of crafting as a way to make money but, for most players, it's a net loss. The items casual crafters can make pretty much always sell for significantly less than the reagent costs to make them (if they sell at all). The only way to turn a profit is to invest a ton of up-front gold on mats and recipes to rush to max out your skill, and then spam trade chat looking for work.

As a result, if you want to craft, you either have to go all-in and commit a ton of time in order to turn of a profit, or accept that you're paying gold to craft rather earning it. That makes it really unappealing for a lot of casual players, and I think that's a shame.

I don't know what the solution is to make crafting more casual-friendly without completely borking the economy, but it's a frustrating problem.