Artisan applications - another broken Crafting 'feature'?

tribbulater

Not bug reporting this as yet, since I've no idea if it's actually a bug or even a general issue.

I have cut back on logging in and doing anything active in game, since so many different things are bugged/pointless/unbalanced lately. What I've noticed is that the rare time I bother to run a character over to the workshop, I have virtually no new Artisan applications.

As in, 1 new application after 3 days. One guy even had 0 new artisans applying after 3 days. I used to get 3-5 apps after 24 hours away.

Has anybody else noticed a major drop-off in new artisan applications?