Project Lore

One of the features of World of Warcraft that really pulled me into the game was the seamless transition between zones. I had just stopped playing Final Fantasy XI, which had a dismal loading time between zones and really made the world feel disconnected. There was no way all of those zones would fit together on a world map. WoW's seamless transition between zones offered a great level of immersion. The few loading screens were either from crossing continents, which felt justified with a picture of a world map, or for instanced dungeons. Going through a portal and getting instanced really felt like I was being removed from the world and placed elsewhere; if I looked out onto Silverpine from Shadowfang Keep, I couldn't see other players or even monsters wandering the world like I would if I was outside. It made instances where you observe the outside world, like Scholomance (or recently Oculus or Utgarde Keep), a little confusing at times until I reminded myself I was still in Azeroth. Fast forward to the release of Burning Crusade. I was ecstatic to play a Blood Elf, but one thing that took me out of the game was zoning between Quel'thalas and the rest of the world. The transporter to Undercity and portals into Silvermoon weren't a big deal since they took some time to load anyway, but simply walking into Eastern Plaguelands requiring a loading screen to go from the new "Burning Crusade instance" to the Eastern Kingdoms seemed unacceptable. Additionally, for players in the Draenei and Blood Elf cities and starting zones, player arrows on the minimap showed up when players were in other Burning Crusade lands, like Outland, but not nearby in Eastern Plaguelands! I was convinced it was one of the reasons by beloved Silvermoon city wasn't more popular and why I spent so little time there, even compared to the Undercity. This got me thinking forward to Cataclysm. With flying mounts now allowed in Azeroth, unless Wintergrasp-like flying restrictions are put in place, most of the world is going to have to be one big chunk of an instance. Blizzard will have to make sure that the Ghostlands border with Eastern Kingdoms is ironed out and remove the instancing restriction. Acherus will probably now be accessible to non-Death Knight players. The Draenei areas will likely be brought into the fold as well. Some areas like the Echo Isles and other distant zones may not have to be accessible by flying mount to the main continents. The implications of this are interesting. The Burning Crusade starting zones were instanced because they wanted the new starting quests to be exclusive to people who bought the expansion to sell more games. In addition, Jewelcrafting, the new profession at the time, only had starting trainers in Silvermoon and the Exodar, so players had to have Burning Crusade to train for it. The question that now arises is: what will happen to this Burning Crusade exclusive content? Will owners of only original WoW now be able to train in Jewelcrafting and do the Blood Elf and Draenei quests, and even maybe make Blood Elf and Draenei characters? Perhaps Burning Crusade, and maybe even Wrath or Cataclysm, will be rolled into the original WoW. The start-up cost to get into WoW is getting price prohibitive for getting new players, and players starting anew will already be experiencing the new post-cataclysm world. These new players would be "free riders" on the Cataclysm content, so why not include all the expansions, at least through Wrath, to new players? If they are getting the content anyway and it entices them to stay longer, they will make more money on subscriptions from enticing players to stay anyway. What do you think? Is it time to roll all of the old games together?

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It started out great. Hitting 80, jumping into dungeons, my first downing of the Black Knight and subsequent farming of ToC. Then came the daily heroics. I was slowly building up my collection of purples, and it showed as my DPS jumped from really crappy to only moderately crappy (still working on that part - hoping rounding out with more purples helps!) Yes, Locomomo's advancements in Azeroth made me giddy. What did not was the depletion of my bank from a couple thousand gold to only a couple hundred; mostly from high repair bills and buying gems to socket into my shiny new gear. Those stupid jewels, if you want the good ones, are ridiculously expensive. And I DO want the good ones, at least for the gear that I probably won't replace for a while. I haven't even started looking at enchants yet, unless it's something a guildy can help me out with. In the grand scheme of things, what I've spent so far isn't all that much gold - I'm sure I could make it back pretty quickly if I really needed to. But therein lies the problem. If I take the time each day to run the dailies I need to make back gold, I lose out on raiding time. If I raid, I get more awesome gear that needs gems to make it even more awesome. Not to mention higher repair costs. What's a girl to do!? I'm thinking it comes down to time management. I don't play as much during the week anyway, but if I can manage to pop on for a few dailies each day, then save up longer raiding sessions for the weekend, that might be the key. Finishing up my exploring may have to be put on hold. Another possible solution - finishing off leveling up my leatherworking so I can get my buffs from the profession, and maybe even making some money off what I can make. Then once I get the leatherworking up, I could drop skinning and pick up another crafting profession. But then there's the issue of leveling it up without the gathering profession - of course, that takes more money! Then again, if it's jewelcrafting I pick up, then I won't have to buy jewels anymore, just the reagents. Ack, too many decisions! Any readers out there with two crafting professions? For that matter, any with dual gathering? Do you use it more for the benefit of your own buffs, or for money making? What other methods have you found to manage gold-making and gold-spending?

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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?

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One of the fundamental things that players should understand about the WoW economy is that there is massive deflation. Items, in general, become less valuable over time as new items are introduced. Players no longer want iLvl 200 or even 213 crafted gear, as well geared players from high level raids can easily carry them through heroics or Naxxramas. As such, materials for crafted gear are less in demand than they once were. Blue gems should lose value once epic gems become accessible. Additionally, once an item is introduced, the players that want it the most will pay ridiculous prices to get it first. Prices lower over time as supply ramps up for non-top tier raiders. In general, its a bad idea to stockpile items. However, understanding how new changes will affect the economy and acting early can lead to huge profits. There are two major changes that will affect the economy in patch 3.2. The first is the introduction of epic gems; the second is that Emblems of Conquest are now obtainable in all pre-Crusader dungeons and raids. We will talk mainly about epic gems for now. Epic gems are obtained in a few different ways. Lets review:

• Alchemy Transmutes
• Icy Prism. You can't save them up now, so don't try
• Prospecting Titanium Ore
• Buying with Honor or Emblems of Heroism

Buying them with Honor and Emblems will probably be very unpopular, as everything will be dropping Emblems of Conquest and players will be eager to grab new gear before they will grab new gems. The other three will have a profound effect on the market. First, lets look at Alchemy transmutes. Most Alchemists are Elixir Masters. As as Alchemist myself, I can vouch for how useful this is. I make dozens of flasks a day, and this generates tons of gold. If I can get a friend to craft my elixirs who is elixir specced, Transmutation Master for myself might be profitable. Since transmutations are on a 20 hour cooldown, its hard to share that ability with anyone, but a group of a few alchemists could have 1 elixir master and all the rest be Transmutation Masters to optimize overall output. I know my guild is organizing something like this. Transmuting an epic gem usually requires a blue gem of the same color as the desired epic gem and a specific Eternal. The following is a list of transmutes as they are now on the PTR:

• Transmute: Flawless Amytrine: Monarch Topaz and Eternal Shadow
• Transmute: Cardinal Ruby: Scarlet Ruby and Eternal Fire
• Transmute: Dreadstone: Twilight Opal and Eternal Shadow
• Transmute: Eye of Zul: 3 Forest Emerald
• Transmute: King's Amber: Autumn’s Glow and Eternal Life
• Transmute: Majestic Zircon: Sky Sapphire and Eternal Air

The first thing to note is that players will be getting epic gems from a few sources. Players will largely be consuming the same amount of gems overall, as they will have about the same number of sockets. Some of the new recipes require epic gems, but it won't have a huge impact on the market. Since only some portion of the epic gems being consumed use current rare gems as a material means that consumption of rare gems is going to go way down. There will still be a market as the poor man's gem and as reagents for transmutes, but the prices of uncut and cut rare gems should drop significantly. Get rid of any stock that you have. The exception may be Forest Emerald, which requires 3 gems for the transmute. Only time will tell relatively how valuable they will be, but blue gems are used a lot by tanks, so I'm predicting a good market for the epic blue gems and hence Forest Emerald. Also, expect Eternal consumption to go way up with lots of new recipes and the transmutes. Its unclear how often Icy Prism will give epic gems. It will be the only thing keeping Frozen Orbs valuable. It will continue to be the only thing keeping uncommon gems in consumption. There are lots of these in Titanium Ore, so expect them to lose even more value in patch 3.2. We are looking at vendor trash level of value. According to WarcraftEcon's results, they are getting around 6 uncommon gems per prospect, and people will be prospecting a lot to get epic gems. Speaking of prospecting Titanium, this is going to be the game changer. People are stockpiling Titanium now, which may or may not be a good idea. It might be overvalued right now; it's risky to do. However, with rare gems losing demand and rare gems being the result of Titanium prospects as often of epic gems, rare gems should lose a significant amount of value from this alone. The flipside to this is that the value of Saronite and Cobalt should crash, as they will no longer be valuable to prospect. This is going to be a huge window of opportunity for Blacksmiths, who can potentially make lots of BoE stuff and disenchant it. Expect Enchanting supplies to increase in supply in the long run and prices to drop. Finally, note the materials for the new crafted items, including a new orb from the Argent Coliseum: Crusader's Orb. This list was complied by the writers at WarcraftEcon:

• Titansteel Bar
• Saronite Bar
• Arctic Fur
• Heavy Borean Leather
• Icy Dragonscale
• Nerubian Chitin
• Moonshroud
• Spellweave
• Ebonweave
• Crusader Orb
• Various epic gems, Eternals, Enchanting materials
• Deadly Saronite Dirk
• Corroded Saronite Woundbringer

These will probably enjoy a small price boost in the first month or so of patch 3.2. Remember, the first two weeks will be crazy, as everyone will want epic gems and consumption will be through the roof. Expect it to level off within about 6 weeks. What are your plans to profit in patch 3.2?

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When patch 3.0 hit, I dropped Engineering for Herbalism to prepare for Wrath. I thought it would better complement my Alchemy, and raw materials like herbs were likely to be in high demand as people level their professions. I thought that the Lifeblood ability would far outweigh the benefits of Engineering as far as usefulness goes, as the Engineering item enhancements do not stack. Months later, I'm wondering if I made the correct choice. Lifeblood is barely useful in PvE; healers don't expect me to cast a small heal over time and the health I regenerate in that period is unlikely to save me before a healer gets to me. It doesn't provide me with any stats. It is questionably useful in PvP, and I've been eying other professions like Jewelcrafting to provide me with more usefulness in raiding and arena. Blizzard has very much begun to treat professions like they treat classes: diverse, but all useful. Hardcore raiders will spend thousands of gold to squeeze out another dozen or so DPS, and Blizzard wants players to choose the professions they enjoy, not the profession that they should choose in order to best perform in content. All the different professions have comparable buffs to each class in both PvP and PvE situations, often in the form of bonus stats. These often take the form of special item enhancements, like Enchanter's ring enchants or Scribe's shoulder inscriptions, or passive abilities like Toughness. To me, Lifeblood is not nearly on the same footing. It has its uses in some situations, but having to use another action bar slot or hotkey as opposed to doing an enchant or getting a passive enhancement for a lesser effect gives me a sour opinion of Herbalism's PvE/PvP usability. As far as money making, some professions have some ability to make money by doing things you normally do while questing and exploring and an ability to make money by spending time on just the profession. Usually, this is in the form of gathering and crafting. For example, engineers can craft epic BoE items and collect from gas clouds they encounter in the world. Miners can mine from nodes that they find while out and about and can smelt ore into bars. Tailors can craft BoE items and have the Northern Cloth Scavenging to find more cloth while killing mobs. Either way, most professions are designed to be able to be lucrative both passively while roaming in the world or by investing time into them. Professions that satisfy this are Enchanting, Engineering, Tailoring, and Mining. I consider these professions to be much more appealing than the others. With the carpets from tailoring, I just may pick up Tailoring on my main (rogue). Its interesting to note that these professions are generally considered not to have a direct "complement", like Alchemy/Herbalism or Skinning/Leatherworking. For now, if Frost Lotuses weren't selling for 30 gold or more on my server, I'd be dropping Herbalism for something else right now, because it gives few benefits compared to other professions. The only benefit I would miss is being able to track herbs, which helps immensely for some of the Cooking dailies. As far as effort required, some professions are very easy and some are very difficult. Inscription requires you to stock a lot of herbs, pigments, and inks, and also requires you to sell a wide variety of glyphs to make the same amount of money as the other professions. Enchanting can be difficult to market - many players have an enchanter in their guild or someone they know rather than check the AH or shout in trade. Inscription seems very unappealing on a main for me for this reason and that its hard to "passively" make money. I think this needs work in the long run. What professions did you choose? Do you ever switch professions, and why?

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This news makes me a sad panda. Currently, Jewelcrafters are able to cut Dragon's Eyes for themselves which give higher stats than any other currently available gems. For example a Bright Dragon's Eye gives +54 attack power, 22 more than the Bright Scarlet Ruby. With a maximum of three socketed in equipped gear, this gives Jewelcrafters 66 extra attack power (or the equivalent in other stats). That's on par with most other professions. For example, Enchanting adds 32 attack power to each ring, or 64 total. Alchemists get added effect from elixirs and flasks, so a Flask of Endless Rage gives 244 attack power to an alchemist instead of the 180 it normally gives (a bonus of 64). The difference is in the prismatics. This quality of the Dragon's Eye gems allow jewelcrafters to activate metagems without sacrificing a single stat. It also allows them to gain socket bonuses that they normally wouldn't get. Bornakk just announced an upcoming change that will remove that feature once the next major content patch lands (presumably patch 3.2):

In the next major content patch we will be removing the prismatic quality of the jewelcrafter-only Dragon’s Eye gems. Like other gems, they will have to match the socket color to receive a socket bonus. When this change occurs, players with qualifying jewelcrafting skill will be provided a yet to be determined amount of Dalaran Jewelecrafter Tokens as compensation.

Using me as an example, Dragon's Eyes being prismatic mean I was able to gem for an extra 66 attack power, gained three socket bonuses of 12, 8, and 8 attack power, and replaced a blue gem that had 12 stamina (something I don't want to gem for in PvE) with a gem that gives a pure stat. The total bonus from switching to jewelcrafting for me? 110 attack power. That's a lot more than any other profession could hope to give me from a Min-Max PvE standpoint. So I switched from Herbalism to Jewelcrafting. Epic gems are coming sometime in the future. Since they should be on-par with the currently obtainable stormjewels, which are unique equipped, Each one will give 40 attack power. Developer's plans to make epic gems much more obtainable than they were in BC mean my bonus from being a jewelcrafter will from 110 attack power to 32 attack power once those become available. Blacksmiths, who get two extra sockets on their gear, will go from a profession bonus of 64 attack power (on par with other professions) to 80 attack power. Looks like there's going to be a new best profession in town.

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Ever feel like your career choice is going nowhere? You’ve put in your time, and invested a lot in your job, but in the end you are just not getting enough out of it to make it worthwhile? You feel like you should stay out of loyalty, but in the end you just know you would be far happier doing something else?

Well I am at that point in life. While I have certainly served my tenure, I just see no reason to stay an engineer. Yes I’m talking about my WoW profession, what did you think I was talking about?

I have been an enchanter/engineer for as long as I can remember. I have been a perfectly happy enchanter, I get a nice boost from the ring enchants, and I feel like I am providing a valuable service to my guild (although I wish I could get a few more shards). Engineering on the other hand, has always been about one thing for me. The goggles. In TBC they were the first epic I acquired at 70 and I wore it all the way until I was leveling again. I loved the goggles, and they were worth the entire profession. Now things have been a bit different. I excitedly leveled my engineering again in Wrath, and crafted the goggles as soon as I could.

Then I ran Naxx 10, and found that that T7 helm would replace them for me. That’s right - the item that lasted me all the way into the Black Temple in TBC was replaced by an item from the first 10 man dungeon in Wrath.

So after spending thousands of gold and tons of time leveling engineering in Wrath I am seriously considering just dropping it all together. I’ve never been one to change my professions, and I’ve taken pride in the fact that I’ve had the ones I do for so long, but I just don’t really see the point anymore.

My thought is it may be time to pick up jewelcrafting. The stat bonuses seem much greater, as does the money making potential. I understand this will be an expensive prospect, but I think in the long run it will be worth it. I could really use a more profitable profession, and those special gems and trinkets look just awesome to me.

So what do you think loyal readers? I am asking for some advice here. Should I stick with engineering until 3.1 with hopes of some new patterns? Or should I drop it right away and stat my new career as a JC? Perhaps there is even another career choice I should consider? What do you think? I am in need of career counseling.

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How do you choose your professions? If you just want to make money, clearly there is a general consensus that taking a couple of gathering professions such as mining and skinning would be best. Just head out for a little while, gather up some materials, and sell them. No sinking money into leveling, no rare recipes to find, no investing in mats to make something and hoping it sells. However, if you want to make your character as effective as possible in battles, it will probably cost you a bit of cash. All of the crafting professions have a few items that can only be used by characters with the right profession, but some are better than others. A couple of the nice ones are engineering for goggles, leatherworking for drums, enchanting for ring enchants, and alchemy and jewelcrafting for trinkets. Let's say you decide ring enchants and drums are best to make your character top the dps charts. How are you going to make that profit? Doing enchants and making armor kits will only make you so much money, especially if you have to buy mats. So, now you have to make an alt in order to provide mats and make a little more money. But don't you want to make your alt as uber as your main? I guess that's just something you'll have to decide for yourself.

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