Rangers are boring as hell too and you can spam a lot of things in this game, but thats beside the point.

If you had people make who could be craftsmen, they would require material/skill to build things. To build up your skill you need something to practice on. So it would go like this. Lets say that Joe as decided to be a dwarf armorer.

Dwarf Armorer - specializes in axes, mace (better weapons if they build these). As far as armor goes, dwarven forged armor tends to be heavy and bulky. So Bob the warrior comes to Joe the armorer and say he needs 2 mithril axes.

1. Joe the dwarf needs 2 pieces of mithiril, 20 lbs each.
2. Joe goes to the mithril mine, wherever it is. There is a shop there that sells mithirl in quantites of 1lb, 5 lb, 10lb, 15lb, 20lb, 25lb, 30lbs. Maybe the mithril mine can charge different prices for different qualitites of mithril, which would make better weapons/armor. (10% mithirl, 25%, 50, 75, 100) Costs would rise drastically with each quality %.
3. Joe says to Bob, ok well 2 pieces of 20 lbs each would cost you 40k. 20k each piece. I will charge you 30k for the work.
4. Bob pays joe for the material, Joe goes and buys the mithirl and comes back and works it.
5. Bob pays Joe for the work and gets the axes.
6. Bob gets better at forging or whatever, maybe. Then gets 1000xp for making the axes.

For ranking the craftsmen can go out and kill stuff like other people do but they just have no specs/skills, or very limited ones. If nobody wants to take Joe out ranking maybe next time they need a bad ass weapon when they were full looted and are pennyless, Joe will give them the finger.

Craftsmen may not wear armor like all other chars, they have to wear the stuff they make or something like aprons, caps, gloves etc. No darkened platemails and wide coppers.

They are vulnerable to PK like everyone else but next time you need a 4/4 avg 25 mithril dagger, go kill a mob if you like to pk the dwarf craftsman. The craftsmen would also have a place of their own, like the Inn. Protected by bodyguards who are rank 45+. This would cost the craftsman a fee per tick. If they dont get clients or whatever, they will eventually lose their protection and shop. So they either build stuff for money or go out and gather copper to pay their rent/protection.

Imperials could place contracts with craftsmen for weapons/armor etc, so could the fortress and marans and whoever wants weapons when they die and dont want to go out and regear. It would be up to the craftsman to forge the stuff and see that he has a good rep or bad one. Bad rep could lead empire to pk you and take your money.

Dont forget valg that some people really like to build fortunes and run their own medieval shop etc. It may seem boring to you and me but some people like it. They may like sitting there and forging 100 swords. Some people like to play Non PK chars, for rp only or whatever. They may like slow, methodical strategy games. You could easily make this non-bottable.