The purpose of crafting orders was how to solve this question:
“How do we have BoP crafting materials drop in Mythic+, and have players make BoP gear from it, even if they don’t have the relevant profession?”
Answer: work orders.
That’s the entire reason the system exists. People keep trying to read too much into it.
And, as the blue post said first and foremost, THE SYSTEM IS DOING WHAT IT’S SUPPOSED TO in that regard.
Are people wearing tons of 418 ilvl crafted gear? Yes. Most of the 418+ gear in the game right now has come from work orders.
Work orders are not the be-all, end-all of Dragonflight crafting.
Work orders are not a replacement for the auction house.
Work orders are not there as an endless Midas Mill of gold for you.
Returned Trade Chat to being exclusively about trade. If for some reason you keep this chat on in Dragonflight, you will be pleased to be barraged with 100 “LF X Profession CRAFT x Item” flooding your chatbox per minute. Even though last expansion we had systems like auction houses that could solve this headache of sifting and posting craft requests, for some reason Blizzard thought it would be better to invalidate that core system
This. I leveled slow. Enjoyed the story until i hit the rep gate (working on renown 19 now). My mage is a tailor/enchanter. I’ve never seen even 1 item on the crafting order system. As far as i can tell nobody uses it. Trade chat or city chat is bombarded with looking for crafter instead of posting orders.
I think if they removed the personal order system and left it public only they would make a small impact. In the flip side it would prevent people from just creating for themselves on alts.
Unsure how to fix this but i would like the chance to clear one quest I’ve had since i first hit valdrakken. (Fulfill 3 creating orders).
But as designed, it only functions if your realm has a X number of active players using it. Most servers don’t have the numbers, thus WOs are dead on them.
What Blizzard needs to do it merge all the low population servers into a dozen or so realms.
I think that’s true as well. My biggest disconnect is that Blizzard gives me a weekly quest to fill 3 work orders which gives me the impression that they thought people would be asking for many more crafting orders than they actually are. So I think it fails more from the crafter side than the customer side. From the customer side, I agree it does exactly what it’s supposed to.
So my main question for Blizzard at this point is, “as a crafter, how often did you think I’d be filling orders and what did you think I’d be crafting in those orders?”
A lot of people have brought up FF14 crafting in comparison and I actually don’t think the main difference is in how the crafters make gear. I think the main difference is in what’s available to craft. Namely, when I do crafting to make money in FF14 you know what I’m mostly crafting? Furniture for housing and previous expansion gear for cosmetics. Now obviously WoW doesn’t have housing, but the main point is that we lack for work order crafts that someone would pay for just because they want it rather than for its combat value. We have the odd mount or toy here and there but I don’t think that’s enough. We need some sort of regular work order we can fill that Blizzard doesn’t feel like they need to limit via a Sparks system.
I make 418 leather helmets for people. I have a friend who makes 418 necklaces for people. I have another friend who has cranked out multiple 418 weapons for people.
That’s what work orders are for. Using BoP mats on characters to create BoP gear for those characters, even if they aren’t a Leatherworker or a Blacksmith or a Jewelcrafter.
Overall I like this new crafting system, though the reagent bag should be MUCH MUCH bigger, if not infinite slots, and might as well put it cross-account while we’re at it. Scouring your account for a few rousing element can be a pita, particularly when you’re juggling many professions, and there shouldn’t be any order cost if personal order towards an alt.
Oh and I went toolsmithing with my blacksmith and honestly feels like I wasted all my knowledge points. Nobody asking for tools for some reason, and even with all that knowledge spent, I can’t seem to 5 stars anything that’s not beginner tool.
What they should do is make you enlist in the work order system as a crafter and set prices for your different recipes.
Has some set up time for the crafter but running a shop takes time doesn’t it?
Now people could browse the different crafters the stats they have (inspiration and so on) and decide who they want to order from, what they charge and recipes available.
You know … like a store front for services.
And the AH is the store front for goods.
If you want to create a crafters fantasy I would definitely run a store as a crafter with all of those things displayed for customers at all times.
Currently they can’t even know my profession if I don’t spam trade chat.
The post from blizzard on their crafting system, carefully placed in the Community Council forum to avoid criticism, is the closest we’re going to get to
"We, Blizzard Entertainment, have royally ****ed up.
They have some ideas to fix it, I guess…
But in the mean time we’re likely stuck with this for 2 years.
And while this system of crafting orders has certainly failed majority of the playerbase it has sold LOTS of tokens. Way more than Legendaries.
The token price is down to the 140-150k mark, which is really low.
In the meantime I would love to craft drums, armor kits, etc… but they all sell for less than the cost of mats, and I can’t level up my skill except to place crafting orders to… myself… from my alts.
The current rate is 5 gold for the order and a commission set by the crafter. Try getting something meaningful craft without first agreeing on a fee and paying it.
So no it is not free and even the commission is set by the crafter in reality
The Valdrakken put up a tailoring item request. They need people to turn in 3 items that only tailors can make and only make through the WO system (bop, can’t be sold on AH or trade chat). The person puts in 3 WOs for it, gets the items and turns in the quest. Recives 750-1k rep, and 1k gold.
The tailors on the other hand don’t see that quest, instead they have one at the Tailor Master the fill 3 WOs of the item. Rewards are the same when they turn in, +they get 1 to 3 skill points.
The guy who made my lariat doesn’t charge for his services, just as an example. He’s made millions in tips, though.
Most crafters are happy to make things for free, if for no other reason than to get the skillups, first-time-craft points, or discoveries (for Treatises, etc.).
The fact that it is literally impossible for some professions to cap knowledge in an even remotely reasonable time-frame is sort of insane.
As an example leather working needs a total of 750 knowledge points.
There are 101 possible first crafts; 23 of which are from PVP patterns.
There are 45 points available from a heavily gated rep.
That’s up to 146 one-time points, leaving us with 604 to gain.
Each week you can earn up to another 10:
There are up to 3 bonus points per week from rare skinning items
Up to 1 Knowledge stone
There are 6 points from quests per week
That’s 60.4 weeks assuming you have the drive to PVP, and Luck with pattern drops.
If you don’t add another 3 weeks.
and that’s not even talking about the fact that in order to reach skill cap you need to craft items that are insanely low drop rates, require bi-monthly time-gated mats, or both.
While there are things I like about the system, the ability to craft BOP items for alts/others being the highlight, the rest of this system has fallen flat for me.
