Wouldn’t hold your breath. It became quite clear that blizzard didn’t really care how professions panned out when they let a bunch of people keep progress from some exploits that benefited professions early on while at the same time patching it and screwing over anyone that wasn’t fast enough to take advantage of it.
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There’s two kind of catchup I think. There’s accelerating a new toon to “practical” levels, and there’s a literal “catch up” for old players that simply haven’t been chasing professions. Those are different scenarios.
If the Dragon Shards do, indeed, drop more often and faster for people with new professions, then that helps address the first point. As for the second, I don’t know if they’re going to really do much about that since professions are not power related, and catch up mechanics are mostly to get folks “ready for raiding” more quickly so they can join others in current content.
Of course, I haven’t really heard about any of these systems. I’ve seen Dragon Shards, but had no idea that they would drop faster for a new toon, so I haven’t even bothered with them.
It behooves Blizzard to maintain the investment of players that have kept up with their professions, did the work, etc. vs just tossing it away if someone could show up months later and be where they have worked months to get to.
the DF profession system is the least fun of any crafting system i’ve ever run into in all my days of gaming
literally just a slot machine of time, gold, and frustration
it actively subtracts fun from a player’s time with the game, bluntly chasing metrics as its only goal
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Inept apathy is the cause. They do not want to do the math, and if they could do the math they just don’t want to.
Blizzard’s new mission statement: Made by bean counters for no one but the bottom line.
I think I am finally able to quit as the game becomes nothing but predatory design development.
Let us play the way we want to. Quit using the manipulative predatory design that takes advantage of a vulnerable population of people.
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Objectively terrible take. You shouldn’t have to pay for a server transfer to use professions.
Objectively terrible and anti-player take.
Yeah, and I had no idea she was referring to that, because I’ve never seen those vendors referred to as a catch-up system before. Because they hardly catch you up.
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Absolutely unnecessary. Even my newest alts have finished multiple specializations. My main who missed several months and hasn’t maxed available points weekly is nearly done with all.
Just get renown 20 with Loam and you can buy a billion barter boulders with the 200,000,000 dragon isles supplies you have sitting on each of your toons.
Part of me thinks that ‘Blizz’ truly just tried to address the frustration of years of profession complaints and gave us this trigonometry above and beyond ‘profession’… I really like that it is keeping up with our gear, but it is very complicated. But I really have to commend them for the massive effort of ‘levels’ of complication! Really!
Now do it for 13 characters, (one of each class as most have) and come back and say again how great this system is for you. It may come as a surprise for you but not everyone plays the game on two characters. Soooooo… Maybe when people are all agreeing something is a problem for alts, Mr no alt stays quiet 
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Oh please, these changes were not done to support players.
Professions are designed to be gated such that players cannot progress over a reasonable timeframe regardless of the amount of effort spent, and thus ‘encourage’ (manipulate) players into maintaining subscriptions and weekly playtime to support Blizzard’s business metrics, not player’s enjoyment.
OP: Yes, knowledge needs a catch-up mechanism and an ability to respec.
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I agree! Let us grind for this if we want to.
I had different priorities in life at the start of DF. to now be ‘permanently crippled’ on professions isn’t fun.
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This is done for the players - to give profs value, and it worked - for like two months.
For those who knew to exploit early and exploit often.
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It’s almost 2024 and crafting is by far the WORST part of this expansion.
With how much freedom almost every aspect of the game has, it boggles my mind that crafting is still timegated beyond measure.
With the new expansion coming out in 6-7 months what’s the harm in allowing catch up mechanics for crafting knowledge? Or a way to give players the agency and choice to grind out points if they want?
It’s just absurd.
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Unfair advantage in pet battles
Hah, seriously? I don’t really understand what you mean?
Oh it was a reason Blizzard provide in Beta for soar being absolute garbage an inside joke I suppose for those aware of it.
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I just post what I get from my professions into the AH, I work enough in real life, I play WOW for fun, I don’t need or want an in-game job as well.
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I support this, I had a DF burnout over professions. It requires a lot of time and if someone like wants to bring up a new 70 and wants professions to be part of their game experience like I do, I have no desire to invest all the extra work into that. At the very least, have it where someone can go grind something and turn in stuff to a vendor to learn the professions at their pace and make the crafting experience more reward for when someone does craft an item. I did engineering on my paladin and it was painful and the materials cost a lot without any economic value. They mostly made engineering items unique to engineers making their gear overall limited to small base of people who will more than likely craft something they want themselves. The tinkers are also useless. Alchemists, enchanters, JC’s seem to have a ok’ish economic return but even then there isn’t much out there or needed.
I think professions stopped being rewarding and fun after wrath. I remember in BC i put in some serious work for my enchanter and tailor and the rewards reflected that work later by having unique patterns in demand because i put the work in. I do like the attempt they made with professions but i feels unfinished and abandoned. They could do so much more with crafting orders being something in demand. Let someone buy gear from a crafter that doesnt have the ability to get certain BoP items.
I also wish more gear had JC slots, more variety of enchants. We all want to customize our gear more and cant, I don’t use versatility on my pve gear but yet I get those pieces anyway and it isn’t desireable. if i had a option to put more crit or whatever on it then that would be great.