I haven't explored the crafting yet. You can start collecting resources at level 20 but you can't start crafting until level 40 (I'm level 31).

I think it's too early to tell on the player run economy. There are npc "Traders" you can use to sell items. You also use the Traders as a storage bank. I've bought and sold a few items this way and it seems to work fine.. kinda weird though, being able to access the entire stock from any Trader (they aren't player specific like the UO npc's you hire to sell your goods). You can access a huge amount of goods this way and it has a search function so you can look for a specific item or type of item. But because the game is so new and because you have to be level 40 to craft, I don't think that selling player-made goods has really taken off yet. I'd give it a few more weeks at least before really evaluating that aspect of it.

Also, guild towns aren't really finished... Funcom still has some work to do on that. And a lot of the crafting is centered around guild towns (certain craft training requires aspects of guild towns which are not yet available.)