In other words, crafting enchanting is intended as providing the general purpose gear, with loot being more like temporary improvements, special purpose items or simply curiosities.
My primary concern with this is that it seems that if enchanting provides the best (general) gear, then all the bedecked characters will have enchanted gear, and thus all the best items come from this one wacky new machine, with all items created throughout history being worse... Which seems, well, a bit dull.
In other words, I myself would prefer if the best items about also had a curiosity-factor, as that in many ways makes the experience of an item richer. I realise that the experience of crafting the base items for enchanting can be rewarding, though, like Mika pointed out, but it still seems a bit tamer to me.
This might simply be my own personal preference at play, which doesn't necessarily match all (or anyone) else's, though: and if what took place before enchanting was the best/viablest was that people superfarmed locations for select few rare drops, and that those drops were considered the best and everyone eventually had those, then the same issue of all bedecked characters using the same items were present before too, and would then not be any new issue specifically related to enchanting.
