You CAN craft for yourself once F2P goes live. I did it in Beta. I rolled 8 baby toons, everyone crafted (two were strictly explorer-gatherers). Since you can crit once you open the second anvil on a tier (part of F2P crafting changes!) you actually CAN make yourself GOOD gear before you have out leveled it. All 8 of my baby toons in Beta wore critted everythings.

I don't think anyone is denying crafting needs some serious love, but what you ARE seeing is that there are many of us who would not call it useless.