As a predominantly solo player, I’m going to have to disagree.
They’re too much work and too much hassle for the pay off, imo anyway.
At least they’re easier to level up; unlike DF where I never reached max level engineering simply because I didn’t want to go through all the trouble of gathering mats (and a LOT of them), making the parts (and a LOT of them) to finally make something for 1 point towards max level; when the alternative was to just sell that stuff and make gold.
At least in TWW they’ve added these nifty ways to reach max level easier.
But actually getting the knowledge and all that is still way too much work for what it gives you.
The biggest weariness for me comes from not being sure what is worth the time.
DF was particularly bad for a couple; tailoring got me down a blind alley from which I could not earn enough knowledge points from the things in my unlocked tree to unlock the next, short of spark crafting. And who would send an item to a crafter who can only do 2*? I had to wait until season 2 and send all my S1 sparks from alts to get him unstuck.
Was really hoping the same issue doesn’t exist in TWW - although on tailor again, there’s no cloth to be found. I have exclusively weavercloth. Why? Because he is a healer, and just a healer. I do not do open world content with him, therefore he has no access to resources. I only have weavercloth because my mining character can get it… without that, I’d have nothing at all. Absolutely terrible change, imo.
And I strongly suspect that other professions aren’t very well thought out either. Alchemist, sure, always good to be able to make my own flasks and they last longer, but turning a profit? You sort of have to have played beta to understand which tree unlocks an item that other people want to use in high end crafting, and be sure you specialise in that, rather than what might be personally beneficial.
Not to mention the raw materials cost is absurd. I need something like 140+ ore to craft a single gem to decent quality… what even?
I’ve given up on making any money from professions. I pick a tree that has a thing I want; a 2H sword on blacksmith, flask crafting on alchemist, rings on jewelcrafting, and I just operate in a bubble of my own warband. It keeps my costs down, but earns nothing.
How exactly are they complex? Each profession has a few possible specializations, and each specialization has a few branches allowing players to improve in producing specific items or learn new recipes. Without any kind of guide it is possible to comprehend what each option does, all it takes is a bit of reading of the nodes, all the information is right there.
Except if you want to turn a profit, you have to read every in-game info page for every spec, understand what each of them is likely to want, and specialise in making that.
Which the in-game pages don’t actually provide enough info for anyway.
It’s all annoyingly interwoven and it seems like a lot of players are just going gathering and calling it a day. Which is good because material costs are astronomical…
I’m in 3 different raid groups, some might dabble with 2-4 mythic bosses at the back end of the season.
They don’t make money, they cost it.
But if you have an alt army doing gathering, flask/potion/food crafting, and making you a couple of gear pieces, you don’t tend to spend any either.
I’ve had about 2.5m gold since the end of SL, and I don’t think this is likely to change this expansion. Breaking even is easy and nobody has an excuse to be gold-poor - but being rich is hard.
It is easy to check different quality material prices on the AH and make calculations based on current proficiency in creating a specific item against potential profit, I find that part of the game very enticing. Blizzard even added Concentration stat which prevents mass production of high-quality items for no lifers so normal players have a chance to get in on the market.
If there were no recipes behing knowledge points, but KP only increased quality of intermediary materials and final products, they would be in a lot better position than now.
Understand that I am not mocking this because I used to love Kerbal Space Program, and the amount of pre-planning calculation work for getting something out to the difficult planets, dropping a lander, getting the crew back, and coming home was extreme. I once spent my entire week off work designing a single mission. It is totally ok by me if you want to nerd out!
But I suspect 99% of the WoW player base does not want to do the analysis you are finding enticing because they’d rather be playing the game than planning how they will play the game
Most of us just want reassurance that we won’t bleed gold for the next 18 months, and right now, that’s kind of hard to anticipate, to the point where I just haven’t done any crafting on some of my alts and am just amassing KP from their weeklies until a clearer path is obvious. Yes, I’ve seen zero-to-gold-cap videos, but they don’t help when they’re 2 weeks after the fact and now 1000 people are doing exactly that craft.
Ok, you dont understand it, nothing wrong with it.
So, why dont you come here to forums and ask “hey guys, can someone help how to craft this weapons or this flask”?
Professions arent going to old system, Blizzard stated they are happy how it turned out in DF.
