I could swap out the words “craft” and “crafting” in the question in today’s Daily Grind topic and I think the same point would be made: What you do when you’re not being extrinsically rewarded for it by a game is who you really are as a gamer. If you PvP even though the rewards are crap, you’re a PvPer. If you put together raids even though solo drops are just as good, you’re a raider. And if you craft in a broken economy, you’re a crafter.
I am definitely the latter, though I have much more fun in a functioning economy for sure. Even though popular wisdom holds that the crafting economy in Lord of the Rings Online has been mostly junk for the last decade (to the point that the devs are operating on it), I still have a lot of fun in it and have been powergaming my crafters since returning. I did the same thing with Guild Wars 2, even though I knew it was basically pointless to the meta; it had a point for me personally because I find the crafting progression itself fun, even if it’s mostly just a waste of time and resources to most other folks.
Do you still craft in MMOs where crafting is pointless?