For the last 20 years mining and herbing were S-tier professions in the early game, a quick way to make gold before the bots inevitably took it over. In TWW these professions were dead F-tier from the very first days…
What a joke, why would any HUMAN ever pick these professions up again?
Am I missing something?
Those 3 quality tiers and the timegating on learning knowledge points for the intent there’s multiple “waves” of “powering up” now so people don’t beam an item down immediately so an xpac lasts longer. It’s a feature for the devs, not the players.
It’s delaying the inevitable, as the anti-cheat doesn’t work and there’s already massive amounts of bots skyriding around in TWW content even in early access.
They really need to license riot vanguard, as relying solely on server metrics (which botters already know how to evade by the way) is insufficient as a counter measure. This game is lacking a real client side anti-cheat.
… because I have alchemy, blacksmithing and engineering? 
The expansion also isn’t even out yet so probably 75% of the player base hasn’t gotten their hands on the stuff.
Also alot of the low quality mats are like 50g+ a pop at this very moment…
Uhh…
Last 20 years is a bit of a stretch.
And yeah, my characters have the crafting professions that need what those gathering professions can get, so I do sort of need them.
only something close to 25% of player base got early access
according to a post here on the forums only 21% have the epic version toy, which is only available from the epic version. assuming that’s off a little lets call it 25% just to make the math easy.
when the other 75% start in a couple days the sales will be much higher.
Roughly 75% higher.
Typically, outside of the first week (after the market crashes) bots provide the bulk of crafting materials through gathering profs.
Saying why would a HUMAN ever pick these up again, if there’s no big start of the expansion payoff anymore, seems somewhat spot on.
Assuming the normal non EA release doesn’t bring a surge of buying of course.
can we just take a second to appreciate the nodes which throw bombs?
saw about 5 people land on a node and get dead.
it was glorious 
I, for one, am enjoying the buttloads of gold my mining/herbalism toon has made in EA.
Curious what a “buttload” is to you.
It’s fairly common to get multiple millions in the first days.
I was amazed by how many bots are in Dorn right now mining.
Yes, but by OP’s logic I’m clearly a bot for having gathering professions. Beep boop zeet zort.
I found out the hard way that empowering those nodes creates a single bomb which explodes a lot larger than the graphic shows and is insta-kill damage compared to little bombs that only do about a third to half of a health bar.
Why in gods name would I buy the mats that I can gather for free?
You made millions? Just curious, as even the wow economy discords/TSM are reporting gathering professions to be a bust.
Gets even better when you overload those nodes.
Because if you’re not out of the explosion radius by the time the node goes off, all that’s left behind are smoking shoes.
I’m not kidding or being hyperbolic either, you will die and all that will be left are smoking shoes.
The best and possibly funniest anti-bot measure in my opinion.
are the ez mine nodes going to desync bots at all?
I’ve just been using zen flight mining above the explosives
In my experience, bots drive the price of materials down so cheap, it’s just not worth my time. Cheap to buy.
No way I’m ever supporting the bots by buying mats. I’ll get my own for free and laugh at everyone who buys them.