The Next Expansion: Future Tradeskill Design
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Heartbourne on Tuesday, July 28, 2009 - 65 Comments Tags: Professions, burning crusade, cataclysm, crafting, inscription, jewelcrafting, the next expansion, tradeskills
Heartbourne on Tuesday, July 28, 2009 - 65 Comments Tags: Professions, burning crusade, cataclysm, crafting, inscription, jewelcrafting, the next expansion, tradeskills 
Blizzard has already set the bar for the next expansion. Based on Wrath and The Burning Crusade, players expect to have to level 90. Players expect either new races or a new hero class starting at a high level. Something that not many people talk about but would probably miss is a new tradeskill.Jewelcrafting was very fitting for Burning Crusade; the theme fit in well with the Naaru and the Draeni. Additionally, it added a whole new level of character customization and armor itemization. Inscription worked alright with Wrath; it used herbs as the raw materials, giving Alchemy a run for its money, and also offered some character customization.
In a new expansion, should we expect a tradeskill? What kind of role would it fill?
One of the first things to note is that a gathering profession would be hard to implement. It would require creating nodes all across all of the zones in order to scale with character level. Unless it started at a high level when you learn it, it seems unlikely that Blizzard would simply implement a new gathering profession without a crafting profession.
Supposing they did make a new crafting profession, they have three options for raw materials: ore, leather, or herbs. There are currently three professions which use ore, two that use herbs, and one that uses leather. Enchanting is unique in that it uses equipment as a resource in a sense. The fact that three professions use the products of mining may be indicative of why mining is considered to be the most lucrative gathering profession by a wide number of players.
The obvious design choice would be to choose the resource that is used least by professions to create an overall even consumption of resources. But what profession besides leatherworking could work with leather?
If we look at the Jewelcrafting and Inscription examples, each of them came with a complementary ability to convert raw materials into processed goods for crafting. But what could you do to leather to turn it into something that doesn't fall into the realm of leatherworking? And what would it create? If not leather, how could we use herbs?
A new crafting profession probably would not create armor as its main selling points. For each of the armor classes, there is a profession that creates armor for them. Inscription was reaching with the glyph idea, but its come to be accepted. Weapons are largely in the realm of Blacksmiths, and trinkets are (somewhat) in the realm of Jewelcrafting. Is it even possible with the rate that Blizzard will be coming out with expansions that they can continue to create professions for each one?
It seems that for future crafting professions, it is necessary for them to couple new professions with a new feature. With player housing being one of the most requested features, I wonder how this could be implemented. Perhaps Tauren tents could fall in the realm of player housing. It could fall under a "Tanning" profession. Its kind of hard to differentiate what would fall between these, how this would work for the Alliance, and how to create a profession around just this.
I think the solution is to give each profession the gathering ability that complements it. With more and more crafting professions and less and less gathering professions, the ratio of total players with crafting professions to players who gather more than they craft is decreasing. Having every player be able to gather materials for their craft would simplify it a lot for new players, as well as make it easier to scale professions together. Leveling through the first 350 levels of each profession could be done either by gathering or crafting, making it much easier. Additionally, theoretical new hero classes or players who drop professions for new ones could skill up easier. The profession bonuses, like Lifeblood and Toughness, have been a little inferior and less customizable than their crafting counterparts, and rolling some things together might make it easier to balance. Continuously adding professions and having characters only be able to choose two does add diversity, but it also may result in a lot of content or mechanics not being consumed or experienced by a large player base.
This sort of fits in with my idea of the convergence of crafting and gathering professions that I've expressed in the past. Engineers can now gather from gas clouds, Tailors "gather" more cloth, miners smelt, etc. Most professions can give you money by interacting with the world or by interacting with players and crafting.
Later, I'll talk about some speculation behind Woodworking. Do you expect a new profession in the patch, and what would it be, especially if its Maelstrom based?
Reader Comments (65)
Draenei*
Mount and pet breeding.
I would like to see a brewing proff.
I've always had an idea similar to skinning and blacksmithing.
The profession would be to use animal parts that are looted from the mob to create unique weapons. A profession devoted to weapon crafting using parts of different creatures and those parts could imbue the created weapon with certain powers as well as imbue existing weapons with animal abilities.
Maybe something sort of like a 3rd proffession, that you can only unlock by having 2 certain proffessions.
Or maybe you just unlock certain buffs.
I.e enchanting and LW. With both of these you could put an enchant on a weapon which, when it procs, turns you into a certain animal for a short amount of time and gives you buffs (worgen for dps, with increased damage, bear for tanks, which give more armour, although that would be difficult with druid tanks)
Another one could be blacksmithing and Alch, with that you could make weapons which have a proc, but this time you can set the proc to be the same as any potion you can make (i.e heals you, increased strength for a short amount of time)
There are many other creative ideas that could be thought of.
Just thought of another, Skinning and Enchanting to make mounts?
I remember back in the UO days lumberjacking and some kind of bowcraft/fletching. i would like to see that the new skill, chop trees for lumber to make, bows, crossbows, and staffs.
instead of a new profession i think it would be nice to be able to learn more than the standard 2 professions on a character. Dual spec introduced us with the opportunity to have more than one talent spec available to us, I personally wouldn't mind paying some extra gold to be able to learn 1 or 2 extra tradeskills on a character.
Woodworking.
... And of course with that comes the Lumberjacks.
I think fletching would be an amazing new profession to introduce, I can't think of any professions crafting bows or crossbows, sure engineers can make guns and amo, but howabout a proff to make bows/crossbows, and arrows?
Or you could include that in a woodworking profession which would expand to making other things like staves...
I'd love to see woodworking or fletching, thats my 2 cents
I agree with Ashmodai with some sort of bowmaking/staff making profession. I'm not entirely sure if there should be a Lumberjack gathering profession to compliment this, but it would be cool ^^.
It just seems ridiculous to me that you can't tie a piece of string to two ends of a stick and voilá you have a bow. Or rub some magic dust (from enchanting mats) onto the end of a stick and it magically gives you a boost to your casting abilities.
As a subset maybe you could whittle trinkets, using enchanting mats to make them 'magical' so they give you stats of your choice.
Not entirely sure how this would work at higher levels. Maybe re-inforce bows so you can shoot faster, or add a veneer of wood to a staff or a wand so it gives your spells extra crit. Naturally you'ld be able to make arrows with this as well, maybe this will open up ammo enhancements, with engineers for bullets and woodworkers for arrows.
Infact, if Blizzard so wanted, they could improve this 'woodworking' profession and expand it to instrument making so the bard class introduced for real :D.
I think they should implement a guild hall design like many other MMO's have, and maybe the new proffesion could be guild hall items/decoration crafters, this could create maybe guild buffs for when you're doing a whole guild raid/instance/battleground. I really think the next xpac should ephasis on guilds, think their was a blog b4 about it. Cause MMOs are all about the social gaming!
WOODWORKING would be great !!!
-craft bows
-craft staves
-craft crossbows
woodworking ftw !!!
i think it would be cool if blizzard implented some recipes the reguire the practice of 2 professions sort of like blizzard did with gathering and crafting professions except this is combining 2 gathering professions the idea i allways liked is settting your hearth whear ever you want and you're able to set 3 at a time plus you're inn hearth a great soultion for blizzards desire to make travel easier you can set some sert of device that when activated acts like a magenet and pulls you to it expires after an 2 hours but blizzard would have to cut the cooldown again in order get to use all three and i would allso ike to see some new recipes for the current professions something special like alchenimist can make some sert of potion then can morph you into an a random animal like a bat, eagle any kind of bird or another animal a fish for swimming fast a cat for speed when trraveling aand then thier stuff for fun like potions that turn you into a goblin, snake, squirel, mouce abilitys that increase your natural abilitys and stats leopard reduces the chance your detected in stealph and potions that increase your stamina, agility, strengh, spirit animals like owl, tiger, monkey, bear, lions other professions can have similar abillitys like leathor workers could make some sert of attanchments to your armor similar to christophires iedea engineers can make some ser of mechnical beast JCers can make rings and necklesses that work sert of like trinkets inscriptioners get an extra major glyph slot and and extra minor glyph slot i dont know enough about BC to say anything about that profession inchanting just take the current inchents take am a stpe forward kike double the stats of the armor piece or add an aura to piece armor which decrease the stats of eanyone cought in it just some food for though
personally i wouldn't mind if they made weaponsmithing and armormithing separate trees within the blacksmithing bussines, but this time with BoE recipes
Junk dealer.
Seriously. Make a crafting class that uses large amounts of junk/gray/vendor trash items at it's mats.
2nd aww well close
In addition to Dyra's Woodworking post, they could also make handles for melee weapons for dps or tanking too, and for shields also.
Maybe even make a mount, a murloc drawn buggy or something :P
Personally, I'd love to be able to have a third profession because I do not want to give up herbalism just so I can get a crafting profession that beeter complements my raiding.
just adding a new gathering skill of wood cutting will do where that enchanters should craft staves and bows like they craft wands.
crossbows should be the engneers job
moreover a new crafting prof related to skinning and normal animal drops to enchant items and create trinkits, idols and amulets
librams for inscription
totems for enchanting
I doubt it will be a woodworking profession, since it doesn't really fit into the theme of a water-based expansion. I think the new profession will be a crafting one using enchanting mats...beats me what you'll craft tho :)
Ok this may seem odd and would require some work, but how about a woodworking profession and the gathering aspect would be well cutting down trees since trees are in almost all of the zones in WoW, and the woodworking prof could be used to make player furniture and housing. ect. log cabin, chairs in house, benches, so on so forth. This also goes along with Drya's woodworking post.
For the next expansion pack the new trade skills should be IT Consultant and Call centre operative.
What might be awesome in my opinion would be a mix of being woodworking and leather/cloth using in 'Heirloom crafter'. Could create a whole mix of things, from useless vanity stuff (non-combat pets, mounts, a teddy bear you put on the ground that works like the toy train set, but instead makes everyone use the /sleep emote =P), to idols and relics. Maybe also with their skill from handling precious souldbinding objects they could sell BoP items which bind to the first person, that either is not them or another Heirloom crafter.
Not sure exactly what I would put the borders at for what they could craft, but a new pet crafting profession would be great.
i think it would be cool to have farming as a profession, it would make mats for cooking easier to get, and you could grow stuff to weave into cloths, it also go's great with player housing
idk just a sugestion