Can I Just Play Without All This Profession Stuff?

So after a couple years, I decided to come back to a server I played on when I was 11-12. Back then I'd been playing since a bit before Gavel came out and then some time after it came out. Eventually I stopped playing only to get nostalgic and try again earlier last year. I got turned off by the new economy update features due to how tedious they looked to deal with, and just wanted to see the builds and new content and probably re-explore the server too. Back to the question I'm asking, can I ignore crafting/resource-gathering and still be as powerful as everyone else?

 

absolutely

I am a warrior who does no crafting or mythics and I can solo the Eye easy

and the popular crafted items are on the trade market anyways, so you can buy them. Granted endgame crafted armor can be crazy op, but usually it’s much easier and not too worse to just wear non-crafted gear.

 

professions are super optional and I don't know why they still want to include them in the main tutorial

it's so misleading

the items you get aren't typically that great either. In the endgame you can get some LQ I guess, but those items are on the market all the time, and comparing the advantages of profs to the disadvantages, the grind is so heavy that the disadvantages win by a landslide.

 

Yeah you can ignore professions.