I don't know how hard this would be to code on an MMO, but why not make provisioning and stealing work as they do in Skyrim? With outrageous vendor prices, 150g for a single ingredient, provisioning costs are out of hand. This is happens when all in-town bags, barrels and crates become steal only, vendors can gouge us. In Skyrim, you can open a barrel and you may see an item you can steal and another you can take without penalty. The stolen item is in red, the other item has no alert border.

At the moment, the lowest level provisioning seems very confusing for new players. With b2p, I expect an influx of newbies and there's no reason for what should be the easiest craft to be so off putting. The hint text in the first provisioning quest with the Dunmer tells you to search the town for ingredients. If you go search, everything is steal-only.

So would this work as a compromise between the two? It allows you to loot provisioning ingredients as on live, offers another way of introducing the Legerdemain skill line and if you open a container with a recipe you need but don't have, then you're faced with the decision of whether or not to become a thief....