Outside of the auction house there's usually three ways of getting new gear in MMOs: quest rewards, random drops and crafting.
The balance between these three varies from game to game, and early on it's often the crafted items that bring up the rear, being generally inferior to quest rewards and often to random drops as well, until you'll feel like you're working on levelling up craft skills because they'll be useful eventually.
LOTRO is reasonably well balanced. As a weaponsmith I've had some use out of crafted swords so far, and there's enough depth in the system – with the ability to make multiple higher quality versions of items with rare components (and a bit of luck) – to keep it interesting.
I have had to backtrack a little to top up my tier 1 and then tier 2 materials when I moved on past the areas where they were found, but that didn't take long. I've also accrued plenty of materials for the other crafts which currently fill up most of my bank slots and will, in future, supply multiple alts.
LOTRO's crafting system definitely encourages alts. I'll hold off on those for now, but at least when their time comes they'll have access to some decent weapons.
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