I understand the need to keep the privilege of item making to a select few people, however, I have an idea that I believe will be beneficial to everyone. Once a player has an item (or item set) there should be a way for even regular players (meaning not PP) to upgrade their items, by level and quality. What I am proposing is this:

Each npc in the game (on official maps as well as player created) has a chance to drop certain items, let's call them Level Chips and Quality Chips for lack of better terms. If a player has an item that is 20 levels too low for them, they can then spend X amount of Level Chips to upgrade the level of that item. Also, if they have a Monstrous set that they want to upgrade to Godlike they can spend Quality Chips to do this.

Also, the higher the item level the more Level Chips it would cost to level it. Same thing goes with the quality. In addition it should also take more Level Chips to level a Godlike item than it would take to level an Uncommon item. So the higher the level/quality the harder it will be to level and upgrade the quality.

The drops on these items would have to be pretty low. Just off the top of my head I would have to say .1 % for a level chip and .01 % for a Quality Chip. However, both of these items could also be available in the Specialty Store for those that for those that want to spend points on them. This would also give players reason to buy points if they don't want to wait to save up Free Points.

I'm not sure if CK has a plan in place that will make this idea totally useless, but just in case he doesn't this idea is out here now.  Let me know what you guys think.