The Current State of Professions: A Frustrating Experience

Gameplay Professions
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I wanted to take a moment to express my frustration with the current state of professions in the game. It feels like there’s something fundamentally wrong with the system, and I hope Blizzard will take notice.

Right now, even farming materials and crafting your own consumables always ends up being a bigger waste of gold than simply buying the consumables from the Auction House. This seems counterintuitive—shouldn’t crafting your own items be a viable and rewarding option?

If you’re looking to craft for profit, the margins are so razor-thin (even with concentration-crafting) that making a reasonable amount of gold requires a significant initial investment. Essentially, if you want to succeed in professions, you need to already be wealthy. For casual players or those without massive reserves of gold, this makes it nearly impossible to get ahead.

The situation is extremely frustrating. Everything is expensive, and professions, which should be a way to support yourself or even make a bit of gold on the side, feel almost entirely inaccessible unless you’re already rich. Is this truly the intended experience? Is this actually considered a feature of the game now?

As someone who pays for a live-service game, I expect Blizzard to address issues like this. At the very least, the imbalance in professions should be acknowledged and openly discussed, rather than seemingly ignored.

I hope to see some meaningful changes to the profession system in the future—it’s a core part of the game, and it deserves better.

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Leaving the issue of multiboxxing farmers aside (and possible bots), crafting is no different than in any other expansion. It’s always supply vs demand that drives the price. And based on that, you have the very easy choice to make: Is crafting something on my own more expensive than buying from the Auction House? Then I buy from the Auction House.

Some people fall into the trap of hoarding everything they gather in hopes that at some point they will make strong buck when demand rises, usually at the start of x.1 and x.2 patches. I don’t do that. I dump everything I gather and which I don’t need for crafting at the Auction House. The rank 3 Bismuth I gather while doing my daily run of pet battles world quests is almost always in excess of 2000 gold, sometimes even more.

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I dont know, if your goal is simply to level your characters profession, how do you engage with it? Do you buy all the reagents from the AH? If so I can understand why you feel that way but speaking as a blacksmith/miner I only mine until I get my weekly knowledge completed and that gives me more then enough ores to complete patron orders and with how finesse, multicraft and resourcefulness works, you will always create alloys for example that are cheaper then the sum of their parts because you saved on parts through some combination of those three stats.

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Sylvare’s point is also true. Don’t forget that you can increase your yield and reduce your cost by also investing in rank 5 blue quality crafting equipment, which can maximize Resourcefulness and Multicrafting. I’ve managed to even “save” materials from some of the NPC crafting orders, the best one which has been the Vicious Bloodstone.

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Thank you both, Exiasee and Sylvare, for sharing your perspectives. I can see where you’re coming from, but I have to respectfully disagree with some of your points, and I’d like to clarify why.

@Exiasee:
You’re absolutely right that supply and demand play a major role in crafting profitability, but my frustration isn’t just about the current market conditions. It’s about how the system itself feels inherently flawed. If crafting is designed to be a core aspect of the game, why does it often feel counterproductive to craft your own consumables? The idea of “just buy from the AH” essentially makes crafting feel redundant, especially for casual players who want to enjoy the profession without diving into market manipulation or hoarding.

Regarding your strategy of dumping materials on the AH, that works for some, but it isn’t a sustainable or engaging approach for many players. Not everyone has the time or gold reserves to ride the fluctuations of the market, and it’s disappointing that crafting—an activity meant to add value to the gameplay—often boils down to this kind of calculation.

@Sylvare:
I understand your point about resourcefulness, finesse, and multicraft, and I’ve invested in those systems myself. However, the issue is that even with these optimizations, the margins are often so slim that it barely feels worth the effort unless you’re already in a strong financial position. And while rank 5 crafting equipment does help, it’s another example of the system catering more to those with significant resources to invest upfront.

Even with all the optimizations, the current system feels like it’s designed in a way that makes crafting prohibitively expensive or unprofitable for anyone who isn’t already rich or willing to spend a disproportionate amount of time farming or managing the market. This discourages casual players from engaging with professions at all, which seems counterintuitive for something that should be accessible to everyone.

The Core Issue:
At the heart of the problem is the completely free market that drives crafting. While it allows for dynamic pricing, it also ensures that the system will always favor the already wealthy, who can afford to take advantage of opportunities that others can’t. A more controlled market—one that balances supply and demand while evening out the odds—would make professions feel more rewarding and accessible to all players, not just those who are already ahead.

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I really hate the new system. Not doing professions anymore.

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What you’re referring to as a “free market” is actually called perfect competition in economics. In this model, everyone is producing identical goods using the same methods. As a result, you’re a price taker and can only make a profit by producing cheaper than your competitors.

In real life, this would lead to outsourcing production to low-cost countries and laying off staff, or innovating with better production methods—again, resulting in job cuts.

In World of Warcraft, you need to understand every aspect of the crafting system to stay competitive. In other words, you really have to put time and thought into your craft. It’s more than I’m willing to invest, but others might enjoy the challenge.

However, this applies primarily to Alchemy and Enchanting, not to the other crafting professions. This is exactly why I won’t be picking up Enchanting and Alchemy again unless something changes. As you pointed out, I can simply buy the items on the Auction House and save a lot of time and money.

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I agree yeah, the extra margin you can get if you are not unlucky (unlucky = no secondary stat procs = reduced value of your materials) but it explains the math on a grander scale atleast as to why the gain is so small, because of competition. Selling the reagents raw seems to be more consistent.

On the core issue, personally I feel like if you want to be competative then the biggest problem you can face is falling behind on the weekly knowledge point grind.
What catch up there is, is very time consuming and overal not worth the effort. In that sense I’d say that a lack of accessible reasonable catchup is a bigger issue for accessability then the initial investment cost, both play a part if you want to be competative sure, but if you fall behind on the knowledge point grind no amount of buying reagents on the AH is going to make you catch up, because you are permanently behind in skill points and thus permanently behind in crafting quality. Everyone will be able to do what you do better and will likely mean you have a harder time finding customers.

Personally I’m a blacksmith cause I want to create the mogs for my self without caring for profit from my crafting profession and honestly yeah I have no complaints from that approach to crafting but if your idea is to make money its probably easier to just stick to gathering mats to sell on the AH.

I’m not sure how they could do a controlled market, set minimal prices for items? set prices for items in stone? algorithm based autopricing? either way it’ll cause division and usually that means sticking to the status quo is the best way to not rock the boat.