I’m on the fence still. I think the crafting system needed to be overhauled. It was barely a system before DF. But while DF has done some things nice (like being able to recraftt gear so you can keep your favorite items the entire expansion if you want), they kind of overdid it by making certain aspects overly grindy and complicated and the Work Order system feels useless for most items made by most professions.
So neat concept, sloppy execution. Can easily be salvaged as long as Blizzard doesn’t double down like they usually do.
But here’s the deal: I used to LOVE crafting. That makes the mess it is now terribly painful. I have zero interest in PVP beyond the occasional battleground and have no problem not doing it. But crafting and gathering were tried and true casual activities. Why they had to make them a discouraging grind is beyond me.
I can see that, although you reference the expansion that never happened IMO. I left before I lost my 120 status, and only came back for this the First Microsoft Expansion.
It’s too complicated, even gathering is overcomplicated. DF had some “how to” or “how this works” quests, but they never felt informative, were all scattered about in terms of place and time, and imo just not a good way of informing a player how stuff works. One issue might just be that a quest is one time thing and when it’s done it’s done, you either got that info or it is gone now. Of course there’s looking on the web, but things change so fast you’ll find this or that guide that’s obsolete or assumes you know things that you don’t.
I like the notion that the only way to max out your professions in this game is to shell out for WoW tokens.
Definitely haven’t been hitting 100/100 on my professions using the stuff I gather myself and spending a fraction of the gold I’ve made selling the stuff I don’t need, nosiree.
If all you see is gear, no. Because that’s not what I’m saying. Gear is the reward and outcome of participating, not the activity itself.
I wonder if folks are waiting to get access to more of their sparks, a component required in crafted gear. And I wonder if folks are waiting for when the weapons and gear they are looking for is actually made available.
When you specialize deep, you can only make specialized items. If you focus on a broader reach, you can make more but will require more concentration to compete with others.
Welcome to tradeoffs. You specialized early and the patron requests weren’t looking for the thing you specialized in. That’s all there is to it.
If you don’t like professions, there’s no one holding a gun to your head demanding you participate as a crafter. It being an activity with meaningful choices that doesn’t impact your own player power, whilst providing a way to progress in your own crafting, and have meaningful goals of what you want to be able to create and do … that’s what makes this type of crafting good.
I’m sorry this isn’t an activity that appeals to you, but your approval or disapproval of a good thing is irrelevant. Professions as they were changed in DF and how they have remained in TWW are objectively good as they provide more ways for players to engage in endgame activities. Not to mention it solves the issue of “I want meaningful choices to exist that doesn’t impact my player’s power.”
You cannot respec your profession knowledge for this exact reason. It provides no downside to your ability to perform on your character, but provides people with meaningful choices on how to create, specialize, and identify with their own character as a crafter.
All of this… no.
You don’t need to buy tokens and it is frankly an insane insinuation that you have to in order to engage with professions to do so. It ain’t unfriendly that the only requirement that is asked of players to get profession knowledge is “play the game like you normally would.” And no, the profession trees aren’t even remotely complicated.
This just proves that you didn’t read the quests.
Everything about how professions worked was explained in DF. From gathering, to quality levels, to the different stats, to crafting orders, the difference between public and private (they didn’t cover guild ones) orders, and more. All of that information was available by the same NPCs that folks talked with every week when we went to get our Artisan’s Mettle.
All of the information was in-game and no one read the quests. Blizzard can’t make players who ignore information in front of their eyes pay attention to what’s in front of their eyes. So that’s entirely on your head for not reading or paying attention to the quests, which is hilarious since most of the quests were handled via dialogue options checking in with the player if they understood things or not.
Thing is when I’m questing and just trying to level up, and I get this or that quest and then don’t do anything crafting/skill related - i.e. apply what I was supposed to learn, well it’s hard to remember. Unless you save the tradeskill quests for later, you end up doing them piecemeal over days, weeks, maybe months, and you might not reach a critical mass to feel like you know what you’re doing. You might skip a zone and never do a quest.
The real issue is if it really takes so much explaining over the course of several quests, or you’re expected to read a guide on some website, that’s a hint that it is unnecessarily complicated.
This is the case for EVERY expansion launch in the history of WoW. In 3-4 weeks prices will start to stabilize like they did in DF with most of your gathered mats being relatively cheap (like 1g-15g).
Speaking of grind… Remember when you needed 40 arcanite bars for BiS in Vanilla/Classic? Or LOTS of Khorium in TBC? Crafting has always been a grind.
The new crafting system is not perfect, but its alot better where crafted item can be 3 ilvl below max Mythic Raid ilvl gear. Sure you need to put in the effort of that Mythic Raid (or Mythic +9’s) to get the crests to get the gear to that ilvl. Meaning gear lasts a long time like it did in Vanilla.
Also materials needed for recrafting and item is 50% less than making a new one and some mats aren’t even needed.
Crafting is better now. It’s good not only mithril ore / thorium has value. More reagents, more ways to farm, more alternatives. As someone who play EQ and FF11, I appreciate wow as of right now, and the MMO RPG side it has.
Yeah, that’s all I see is gear when it comes to “crafting gear” Why would I drop 250k on leveling professions if it wasn’t to get gear in an mmoRPG, literal gear based game.
There’s two whole sets of gear people could order right now, one that’s a good start for alts and one for pvp. Not a single work order request yet. So like a said, current system is time gated and by the time people have enough sparks for sets of gear and weapons, they will already be in M+ gear and have no use for it.
You are forced to specialize deep in order to craft lots of the patron orders as you can only apply concentration up 1 tier and lots are t4 crafts for patron.
Would be fine if concentration filled faster and was able to go up multiple tiers.
It’s part of the game and its flawed, so I’m speaking up about the issues with it. Timegating being the main one, the extreme cost being second. Would you rather no one ever points out problems with the game so there is zero chance it ever gets changed?
How does blacksmithing provide players a way to engage in end game activities? You just said no one is forcing you to do professions, but if they are tied to “end game” as you claim, that is forcing people to do them if their goal is end game activities (almost every player).
Which is a massive problem when I am unable to do work orders ( the main way to increase your profession knowledge) due to them all being locked behind nodes I can’t get unless I do work orders…
That’s not my point, it’s that the 606 ilvl is time gated behind weekly sparks and people will just have M+ gear instead of the 606 as soon as M+ drops.
Sure eventually you can craft gear up to high ilvl, but why is the 606 time gated? Why not let us work on and craft the base set, then upgrade it accordingly as time goes on.
Still gated behind sparks for the item itself to be created.
Yes, I know, I buy the patterns when they are decent price for first time craft. Figured people would put orders in for these at least right now but none that I’ve seen yet.
And sparks to actually make the gear… The problem with this is the patron work orders more often than not require you to be deep in the tree for a specific thing. Kinda hard to be that deep on multiple specs when it’s the way to get all my knowledge points now and it keeps giving me crafts I don’t know yet or requires 60k + in amts to do it.
I actually like the current crafting system. Professions back in Vanilla/TBC were a simple “level and did you get X pattern.” Now, professions an ongoing skill that you continue to work on throughout the expansion. Now having said that, I’m not going to say the current iteration is perfect. Although I haven’t had to respec personally, I wouldn’t mind seeing a one time reset or a reset purchased with 1k acuity.
And above you demonstrated why folks ignored them: because people ignore reading the quests. And you ignored what I said in that when you get to Valdrakken, you got a reminder and quick rundown on how each mechanic worked.
You didn’t do the quests or rather, you picked them up, ignored them, completed them, and then got upset you didn’t have any quests to guide you. Not to mention that the tooltips themselves still explain everything you need to know even if you choose to not engage with the quests. The crafting order system is probably more confusing if you ignore the quests but the rest of it can be entirely self-taught with the information available in-game.
So… yeah.
You couldn’t skip them realistically speaking unless you purposefully chose to not do them. And there’s no need to read any kind of guide to learn how the system works.
Oh-kay. Then don’t participate in the crafting process - just buy the materials and commission a crafter and get crafted gear that way.
There you go.