tl;dr: The progress walls in TWW crafting start on day 1, not on the transition between “novice” and “expert.”
Quick disclaimer: I am not an expert or theorycrafter and I have no access to historical data about crafting engagement, the economy, or item prices. This post is about what I see and feel, not what I am stating is objective fact. I’m probably wrong about some things, and that’s okay.
Coming back after a long break, I noticed some big changes to professions in The War Within (I guess this started in Dragonflight). Compared to how they used to work, the system now feels like walking into a wall on Day 1 instead of climbing a hill that gets steeper over time. With Midnight around the corner, I am collecting reflections about crafting:
-Recipes are locked behind RNG and slow time gates
-Any useful crafts need time-gated materials like Artisan’s Acuity
-You can’t grind a profession in a week, it’s locked behind cooldowns and daily or weekly chores
-Leveling your character is fast but leveling crafting is slow, so by the time you can make early gear it’s already outdated
-Professions now have talent trees and making bad choices has permanent consequences. You get one respec per expansion and a second mistake can ruin a crafter for that whole expansion.
-The work orders required for advancement and to obtain gated materials pay dramatically less than the cost of materials.
To be clear, I actually think some of these ideas are solid. They’re trying to make professions feel meaningful again, with a long-term identity and big rewards for the people who stick with them. That’s good. The folks who commit to their craft every week, max out specialization, and chase rare reagents should absolutely be the ones crafting best-in-slot gear and making gold. That’s what real artisans do. In Midnight, I want to to see master artisans get good rewards, unique mounts, and meaningful buffs.
But right now, there’s no rewarding early or midgame for crafting. It’s either you’re all in for the long haul or you’re standing outside looking in. By the time most returning players or late starters can craft anything useful, they’ve already gotten better gear from world quests or tokens. Unless you plan your profession from the launch of an expansion, there will always be a faster way to make gear or cash. Time gating makes sense for top-tier rewards, but time gating the most basic entry point makes “alt-F4” more appealing than the crafting table.
So here is my desire for Midnight: Let us grind out the first 50 skill points and unlock a few useful items in the first week or two. Let us craft some solid blues that are better than quest drops but not as good as heroic gear. A couple gadgets or potions or enchants that are actually worth using, but not so good that they can be taken directly into mythics. These do not have to be marketable items, and the best gear crafted at lower skill levels should be BoP so they don’t ruin the economy. Let us start feeling like crafting is part of our character’s toolkit instead of something that might become relevant two months later, assuming a patch doesn’t make it obsolete.
For Midnight, can we tone down the RNG around recipe acquisition? In TWW, Engineers “invent” a random (first RNG) item daily, break it down into a small handful (second RNG) of scrawled notes, stack 15 of them into a pile, then click the stack for a (third RNG) recipe. It’s kind of silly. Nobody in the history of anything ever set out to learn how to make espresso and accidentally made a soufflé. Then came back the next day and accidentally made pie. Then came back a third day and accidentally made cat food … and still can’t make espresso.
I’d like Midnight to have a “research notes” currency that comes from research cooldowns, repeatable quests, and maybe even rotating Delve missions. You could visit a professor NPC, do a quick research cooldown or fetch quest, get some Artisan’s mats and research notes, and then spend those pages to buy recipes appropriate to your profession level and spec. Still gated. Still a time investment. But at least we’re aiming at something instead of pulling slot machines. Big rewards for long-term commitment should stay. But there needs to be a reason for casual players, alts, or people coming in mid-expansion to care about crafting at all. Right now it’s asking for wiki reading and spec planning and full commitment before it gives anything back. Once the player gets some payback from the low investment in crafting, they’re more likely to continue along the path.
I see similar criticism in these forums, on reddit, and in other forums like Ars Technica. This post by Starwarsfigu ( Professions were completely neglected in 11.2 and War Within at large ) also posted frustration about how few recipes showed up in 11.2 and how neglected professions have been in TWW. It may be an admission that something isn’t working and needs to change. Midnight is coming. It’s a good time to start planning.
I’d like to hear what others think about making the low levels of a profession easy to grind and useful so people can get their toes wet and reap some personal reward before committing to a months-long chorecraft. If professions are the same way in Midnight, are you likely to get involved in them?