Hi,
I got a project in development, a french speaking roleplay shard.
Maybe you can find on these forum what we done to involve Mining into something very different and more fun.
We also delete all classical ores, and now we can mine basics metals only. In a second phase, blacksmiths create "alloy" ingots, by smelting together these basic metals. Just an "alloy" script... The resulting properties of each player-crafted-single-instance of an "alloy" ingot is computed after the craft, depending of the combination (an alliage is a 12metal parts smelt) , and I left a place to include after some other effects as moon phases, incatations, and so on...
After that we delete the full BOD system... To craft a runic stuff, the crafter got to ask a scribe for a runic layer of the kind he wish, and then transfer it on the stuff. Now crafters do their own work as they need (no more craft-loto)... But they have to play with difficulty, the more acuracy they want, the more hard it is... of course.... And as a failed attempt ruined a slot, 6runic properties items (and I don't speek about 6 good runic properties items) will be very very rare... But now runic craft is WIWIWIG...
I'd also made a player constructed rail system with switch for pushing littles wagons into mines...
That is some systems I'm really proud of, and very sure players will enjoy, but we are rewritting so much things.... Yes, there's always shard in development