In a recent blue post about professions (and yeah, most info on that please) they disappointingly indicated that only Dragonflight crafting might permit work orders, to wit:
"Crafting orders are a new way for you to place an order for almost any Dragon Isles crafting recipe ".
This would be sadly limiting for crafters, since there are a heap of other items from the past that people want or need, especially if its relevant to their particular character… An example might be Jade Witch Brew, a cooking item needed for a MoP quest. If you introduce a work order system, why not make it for everything rather than just one slice of an extensive crafting system? I hope this isn’t as limited as it appears.
Also introduced is Crafting Quality. While I don’t madly object to ranks of crafted items, I very much hope they avoid the disaster of legendary crafting, especially as it related to vendor item costs. The price of the vendor mats required to make legendaries (or any crafted item) was horrendous and made it extremely difficult and slow for anyone not extremely gold-wealthy.
Their indicated aim is to make low level crafting fairly simple while the higher grades will be “difficult”. They indicate that a lot of ‘resources’ will be required for top grade items which is fine, as long as those resources are available either in the world through gathering or by making items yourself using gathered items. But if we have to pay our way up via expensive additional mats, that will majorly suck. They do say: “Please note though that the goal is not to have high-end gear cost anything remotely approaching the costs of top Legendaries in Shadowlands” and I hope that’s true.
And they will be allowing recrafting, which shows promise for economical reuse of items (and therefore of material costs expended to make them).
Other interesting information:
"All are Soulbound", so you either make something for your crafting character, or via a workorder. I have one question for that - can I put in a workorder with one of my own alts? Because I have characters that have professions that they cannot use themselves due to learning those proffs a way long time ago which I’m not willing to drop due to very old unavailable patterns or extensive pattern collections, etc. Unless I can make an item on a workorder for my own character, that will again impact on my ability to make good use of my crafting proffs.
“One type of reagent will come from various challenging activities including dungeons, raids, PvP” In the past, this has always been a problem - not so much from needing to do any of those things at the time, but needing to do them after the first tiers have passed. If an item is collected in the first raid and the expansion then goes into the next patch and no one is doing the first raid anymore, collecting those materials becomes extremely difficult. I remember in earlier times I had patterns for items that required a large number of mats only obtainable in the first raid and when levelling up on an alt I simply couldn’t get them as the raids weren’t soloable and no one was doing them. They really need to consider this issue carefully, perhaps by making any such item available across all of the expansions raids, etc.
To upgrade this equipment to around Mythic raid item level, you will need to acquire a final reagent that can only be obtained in the highest tiers of content - Mythic raids, the highest levels of Mythic+, and highly rated PvP."
I understand that valuable gear should not be handed out on a plate and if you are doing Mythic content then you deserve the rewards from that. I’m hoping they remember to keep the fun in crafting and at least let social players be able to create gear that is somewhere near that level, for themselves, their guildies and their friends as well as general work orders.
Last but not least:
“….you will soon get a chance to try out the new and updated profession system…”
Now ‘soon’ can mean anything, but even saying it indicates that its closer than an indication of “a long way off”. So I’m beginning to think that testing might start in the near distant future. Has anyone else seen any indicators of this sort of thing?
Anyhow, its a wall of text I know, but I love Professions and I needed to speak up on the topic while it is all still in the design phase.