I'd say Pirates of the Burning Sea, but that doesn't really count and they may add some "crafting" later on. I would have to go with FFXI. It's probably the most challenging one I've encountered, but it's also the most rewarding. Many items never really become outdated, thanks to the job system and level capped events.

Worst crafting goes to EQ. It's a ridiculous money sink with a lot of useless gear. NPC drops easily top almost everything you can possibly make, with the exception of a few specialty crafts.

Best crafting? I'd have to say Horizons... Nothing has really outdone that game yet.

Worst crafting? Right now I'd lean towards Tabula Rasa, but I'm sure that will improve over time.

The best used to be Star Wars Galaxies, before the NGE.

I have to say Ryzom then Star Wars (both preNGE and post) for best crafting.

Worst... WoW... its just boring.

I agree Horizons had the best crafting system I've ever played in an MMO (have played AC1, AC2, Horizons, Lineage 2, Tabula Rasa, EQ2, WoW, Two Moons, Sword of the New World, LotRO, DDO, SWG).

For worse I'd say Tabula Rasa, but was only in beta so hoping they improved it...

Horizons for first place, LOTRO second. Vanguard is also quite a good one - simple idea in principle, quite tricky to do well, and a nice change.

I liked EQ2 originally, but since the "revamp" it's been made far too simple.

WoW/EQ1/Lineage all rate fairly badly - collect items, click to combine. no skill there!

(my played list: EQ1, EQ2 (still play), Lineage 2, Horizons (still play), LOTRO (still play), Vanguard (play occasionally), DDO, WoW)

saga of ryzom without a doubt. so much freedom and such an inovative approach to it, i can hardly describe how awesome it is. i mean, i would log into the game and spend the entire day harvesting and crafting, and i didn't want anything more. that is how good it was.

Of the three MMO's I've played enough to count to have an opinion on the crafting system--EQ, WoW, and LOTRO--I'd say EQ and WoW are the two worst and LOTRO by far the best of that lot. EQ--man, it got better as time went on but in the early days it was a fast track to carpal tunnel syndrome because you had to mouse-click each single ingredient! And many of the recipes had tons of ingredients (remember Halas 10lb. Meat Pies)? If you wanted to make a quantity of those in the days before they improved the crafting UI you could easily expect to click 500 times for 20 pies.

LOTRO is pretty nice. The UI is good, and the items which can be made are definitely desireable and useful in the game. I just want to elaborate a bit on what an earlier poster said regarding critical success. For food and metal ingots and such a crit will grant you three items instead of the usual one. Where crits really shine though are for armour and weapons. For those, criticals grant a superior version of whatever is being crafted.

Im a big fan of crafting in games and frequently spend a lot fo time doing so in the games i play.

WoW crafting is fairly simplistic and a bit of a let down as nothing you ncan create is as good as what you can get via instances or pvp so not much point beyond something to do past a certain level.

LOTRO has a non over-complicated crafting system that levels well has some nice twists too and is enjoyable and rewarding to do.

Crafting in EVE is pretty enjoyable too, but its main flaw is for those who are only into PVE, if you are like me then there quickly comes a point where you cannot build anything of significance without being forced into low sec and therefore pvp territory and let me tell you there are whole community of EVE players who have made staking out asteroid fields for chump miners an art form...a true shame.

SWG crafting is enjoyable for the most part i like that the quality of your tools and production machines comes into play as well as skill bonuses, but the dependance on largely randomly available resources means the quality of your produced items is consistently up and down, which is more than a little frustrating. i only really enjoy droid building and shipbuilding in swg the rest are a little dull. Tailoring is by far the easiest as the quality of resources matters very little for the clothing side of things.

Crafting in rf online is well.. appallingly dull. 9even before it was free to play)

Crafting in city of Heroes/Villains is nice and directly beneficial to your characters and is done in such a subtle way that doesnt interfere too much with any of the other normal super heroic actions you may be getting upto. This said though the cross-continent connection auction house facility in the game WW where you would sell recipes, crafted items etc.. is the most bugged, lagged, crash inducing pile of bunkum known to mankind.