There doesn’t seem to be any logical reason supplied by Blizzard in this regard, other than to have an NPC say it doesn’t exist there. And yet you have the Brokers searching for ancient artifacts - and if that doesn’t quality as archaeology, I don’t know what does.
This is a very ancient place with a long time to have had items and materials lost within it. Almost more than any other expansion, it would have been an ideal locale for this profession. They could have included it in many ways - by having random dig spots, having regular quests that searched for specific items, having tokens of some sort drop from mining (something similar was done in WoD, in the garrison mine where you found items that were valuable to a faction so you gained an increase in that faction’s diggings) and so on.
It seems such a lost opportunity to me and I’m damned if I can figure out why it was overlooked.
60 Likes
Idk, maybe they are planning on reworking the Profession completely, who knows.
1 Like
I think they have been trying to kill it off for a while. They took the plunge in SL.
“In some ways,” Chilton says, “I wish we had kept some features bound to the expansions they lived in to make room for more innovation without players feeling like we were taking something away.” He points to the Archaeology profession introduced in Cataclysm as an example; he wishes they’d removed it in time for Mists of Pandaria. It’s a practice he intends to follow in the future. The garrisons introduced in the upcoming Warlords of Draenor expansion, for instance, won’t carry over to whatever comes next."
Ref; https://www.wowhead.com/news/archaeology-is-not-expected-to-receive-updates-in-shadowlands-316850
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Archeology is the study of ancient civilizations and fossils. We’re in the afterlife. There’s nothing to find.
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I mean, stuff about the Venthyr and how their whole civilization was build?
The origins of the Kyrian and how they came into their current teachings?
Theres is stuff there.
14 Likes
Blarg. I hate to read this. I liked Archaeology.
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Oh I love Archeology too!
My favourite are High Mountain and Fossil. I’ve inevitably also done a lot of Night Elf archeology too but honestly that’s just a step in my journey to get the digs for Fossil done.
But I ack’ the frustration they would have had in feeling like they needed to keep it.
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When a civilization is still around that’s not called Archeology. That’s called a library.
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As somebody who’s done a fair chunk of arch in WoW, I would imagine the number of people who do it is astonishingly small.
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I still see a ton in Legion. Not so much the others if at all.
In its purest form, without relying too much on our real life meaning, archaeology is digging up old stuff. I’d say that (a) the Shadowlands is a real place because we are there and it has real things (I mean, there are beasts we can kill and skin and eat, and thats pretty real) and (b) it has buildings and structures and solid objects and all those things can be lost and found.
So being un-pedantic about it, it could still be a perfectly viable profession, as much as herbing, skinning and cooking are.
14 Likes
Legion has that weekly cycle where if you do each week, you get a guaranteed mount. Probably propped up the Legion numbers a lot.
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Aside from the archaelogy the Brokers are literally searching for. The former civilization that existed there.
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It really should have been there and tied into to the brokers imo
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Yeah, I think they missed a great opportunity there, which could have created some unique story and questing options for us linked to the profession.
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The intern in charge of it quit.
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… yeah, innovation is fine and good, but burning the house down and starting from scratch every season is a colossal waste of time and resources.
Their obsession with never having to support anything long term makes everything disposable, and having to rebuild everything from the ground up every single time has to take up far more time than iterating on working systems ever could. It also keeps these systems from ever achieving their full potential.
Blizzard needs to stop with the carnival goldfish systems, chasing after designs and ideas one after another like a dog with ADHD in a squirrel refuge, and invest in things with growth potential they can iterate on.
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Half the xpac is about uncovering the secrets of the past. The real reason is because all the Archology trinkets get turned in for Anima already. Also because Blizzard is lazy.
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This. Imagine if a .0 patch built on a .3 instead of throwing the bath out with the bath water.
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Zandalari, Kultiran, Mantid and Pandaren archeology projects say hi
(Also European/African/Middle Eastern/Asian archeology checking how their current civilizations did in the past)
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