So what about Professions in vanilla...

[ricprimus]

Actually, looking at the number of people on the member's list, it would not be a bad idea to go with several gathering profs to start: with a lot of people competition for herbs & ore can be fierce and fetch a good price. Same for leather, but herbs and ore are timed spawns thus limited where leather from skinning isn't.

[Drain]

I look at this the opposite way, ric. Small population means less competition with production professions. There's going to be good money to be made from selling anything created. It'll also be harder to buy items since fewer people will be selling them. Crafting your own gear is very helpful on a small server, as is selling it to others. On a huge server, there's plenty of people throwing crap in the auction house already, so you could just farm/sell materials, and buy your gear instead.

[ZanathKariashi]

yeah, over on Rebirth only 2 people had Lionheart helm plans and only one person had the pants.

Basically any speciality crafting, will have a market. Armorsmithing is required for all the Dark Iron armor set (high fire resistance, must have), Tribal Leatherworking is needed for Hide of the Wild (best pre-Nef healing cloak). Basically everything from leatherworking or blacksmithing above 240 or so needs speciality training for it and is pretty damn nice either for raiding or in prep for raiding.

Tailoring is straight forward. Bags, bags, bags. And some of the crafted armors are quite nice for pre-raiding. Mooncloth is useful but I've found it's value drops as time goes on since the gear you make from it get replaced via carrying through ZG or MC once a guild is solidly geared enough to do so for new recruits.

Alchemy makes flasks (also resistance potions are extremely helpful) and transmutes arcanite.

Enchanting for enchanted leather/enchanted thorium. Also enchants and their mats in general.

Mining is the primary source of gems, which are pretty damn rare, and herbs will be in high consumption (also competition over Lotus spawns), leather not quite as much, but it might help to add some more hides or dragonscales to the vault.