My personal view is that full gear crafting should be available to everyone, constantly. Perhaps only certain town crafting benches allow certain crafts. This visually gives people something to work towards and acts as a carrot on a stick. It would also give certain towns a uniqueness.
However........resources for the better gear is increasingly harder to get. For example:
(Easy accessibility) Hide Armour - 10x leather, 5x linen weave
(Average accessibility) Leather Armour - 20x leather, 10x linen weave, 5x dire wolf hide, 1x fox tail
(Hard accessibility) Assassin Leather - 50x leather, 20x linen weave, 10x dire wolf hide, 5x fox tails, 1x dragon fang
(Extremely hard accessibility) Shadow Armour - 100x leather, 50x linen weave, 20x dire wolf hide, 5x fox tails, 1x shadow wax, 1x shadow dragon scale
etc etc
Making the best gear harder and harder to get/farm the materials.
This way everyone can make the gear, but really you need to either go out and get the materials yourself, or expect to spend a lot of money on the market purchasing them.
(The market should also take a % cut of payments to act as a gradual gold sink - which would help with inflation)
This also encourages grouping up to farm materials, which is healthy for the game.