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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsHow to fix professions for Mists of Pandaria: An open letter to Blizzard
by Fox Van Allen 
Mar 12th 2012 at 3:00PM
Ladies and gentlemen who love the economic arts, today's column isn't for you. It's an open letter to Blizzard's game developers, with me begging on bent knee for them to improve our collective professions for Mists of Pandaria. Of course, you're free to read it too. In fact, I hope you do and add to it in the comment section.
Don't get me wrong, this isn't a letter of complaint. Blizzard got an awful lot right this expansion, and I'm not going to be shy giving credit where credit is due. But there's always room for improvement. So let's roll up our sleeves, point out what needs fixing, and then hold the folks at Blizzard responsible for what we get next expansion.
So, you with me? If so, let's begin.
Dear Blizzard,
Tailoring, leatherworking, and blacksmithing
My first profession ever taken was tailoring. Seemed like a natural fit -- I was getting cloth drops all the time, regardless of whether I was looking for them or not. I've learned since that the profession gets a bit more complex, of course. And since then, I've also learned that there are a few things to be desired about the profession.
Now, hey, Blizzard -- just between you and me, let's have a talk. These guys out here who read my column and level tailoring love feeling useful. It's more important than making money. And it's hard to feel useful these days given how you've been treating tailors, leatherworkers, and blacksmiths in Cataclysm.
When this expansion first went live, all was good. You had all sorts of stuff to make on the path to level 85 and 525 skill. There wasn't huge demand for all the wearable greens and blues, but there was some demand. And even if we were only making that gear for ourselves and for guildies, we felt useful, dammit!
Then came patch 4.0.3 and 4.1. You brought out new patterns for tailors, leatherworkers, and blacksmiths to learn, but only hard-core raiders had access to the materials. Sure, we could buy materials on the Auction House, but as I previously established, they're out of reach for the crafting proletariat.
Patch 4.2 had a few epic recipes "for the rest of us." They were welcome additions, but they were just so damn grind-y to get access to. I mean, I like having new dailies, but the way you forced me to have to run them so much to gain access to something so basic bothered the hell out of me. I resented having to run the dailies, and I shouldn't have! Because they were fun. But there's nothing fun about having a gun held to your head.
Patch 4.3 went back to the same ol' of patch 4.1 -- the good stuff was for established raiders only. Even us Raid Finder users got shafted in a way we shouldn't have -- Raid Finder end bosses should be dropping Essence of Destructions, not now-useless Chaos Orbs. Heck, we can't even get the outdated Living Embers with our JP or VP. Why not?
Come on, throw the more casual players a crafting-related bone here. If you're going to put new epics in the game like you did in 4.2, don't make existing players have to jump through so many hoops to get them. The gating mechanism to get the Chaos Orbs and Dreamcloth would have been more than effective at keeping the epic flow limited. And once 4.3 comes out, don't keep access to the old 4.2 epics so limited. We want to craft. Let us craft.
But hey, don't think I'm all complaints, here, Blizzard. The way you handled PvP gear was perfect, constantly updating the ilevel of the previous tier of gear. It kept an old recipe fresh. Maybe you could extend a similar mechanism so that those of us who just dinged 85 (soon 90) will have a lower-priced option for skipping the terrible gear grind?
Inscription
Man, Blizzard. If you did something right with regard to professions this expansion, it was with inscription. Mysterious Fortune Cards were a stroke of genius -- you created something with steady demand. And it wasn't just because MFCs were fun. They were useful ways to get your endgame food buff, too. Let's keep that idea around for next expansion. It's a home run.
It's hard to keep inscription fresh, especially since the real purpose of the profession is backing up the stale glyph end of the game. But that's not to say the glyph business is impossible to rescue. If you're going to keep glyphs around, it's time to go all in. Bring out new minor glyphs -- Glyph of Shadow was a great item for us scribes. Play around with glyph mechanics a little and give interesting new major glyphs. Edit prime glyphs to make the "wrong choices" -- and come on guys, we all know there are glyphs that no one takes -- more interesting.
Meanwhile, you're so close to a hit idea with your Scroll of Intellect IX and the like. When Mists of Pandaria introduces Scrolls of [Stat Name Here] X, you should make them competitive with what alchemists get with their selection of flasks. They won't be as good because they don't persist through death, and they have shorter duration to boot, but that's OK. They're a different product. They're marketable. The have a lot of untapped promise. Let's make them shine.
Engineering
Blizzard, I do understand what you're trying to do with the profession. You want it to be filled with neat stuff that only engineers have access to. Got it -- it's a decent model, and I say you should keep it.
That said, engineers need at least a little bit of love when patches 5.1, 5.2, and 5.3 hit. Is there any reason you didn't provided new engineer-only head pieces for 4.1, 4.2, and 4.3?
Engineering is a lot of fun -- a good option for those who don't want a profession that's a huge money-maker. But come on, don't make it something that's useful only on day one of a new expansion. Give engineers some love all year long. (And yes, I want you to have Marvin Gaye playing in your head while you read that, baby.)
Miners, skinners, and herbalists
Again, let's talk about what you guys at Blizzard did right for Cataclysm. The basics were solid -- you tinkered a lot with node spawn rates but finally found a decent balance. And you came up with cool bonuses. Being able to transform into a plant was both useful and fun. Being able to find a mining pet was brilliant. Top-notch job with these two.
The only criticism? No doubt you game developers already know what I'm going to say: Kill the phased herbs. It's weird when someone you can't see gets an herb, but it's weirder to see an herb disappear when you get close to it because it's phased. Let's also be careful about nodes placed in mid-air -- that one Twilight Jasmine node in Twilight Highlands frustrated more herbalists than you probably even realize. It tricked us so many times -- even us experts got suckered in to trying to collect it a few times, even after we were pretty convinced it was impossible to get.
Oh, and lastly, I have a really good suggestion for the skinning profession. Could you please finally, finally, finally give skinners a decent bonus for leveling the profession to 600? Critical strike bonus is just ... it's just awful. If you're going to balance and standardize most of the profession bonuses, you really should take the extra step to balance them all.
Jewelcrafting
I'm not going to hit Blizzard hard on jewelcrafting here. There's a lot of good stuff in Cataclysm. It wasn't perfect, but I appreciate your attempt to pace releasing new gems. You upgraded meta gems one patch, gave us epic gems in another.
My critique here: Work on the pacing. If you're going to have blue gems available for 5.0, make your meta gems available in 5.1. Then, in 5.2, make epic gems available for raiders much like you did in 4.3. But for 5.3, you should open that epic gem market up to the public at large. It just feels weird and uncomfortable to still have red gems selling for as much as 3,000 gold each.
We're at the end of an expansion. Those extra 10 intellect, strength, or agility shouldn't be as brutally expensive as they are. I hope that's something we can all agree on -- such a small benefit shouldn't be permanently unaffordable.
Enchanting and alchemy
I'm not exactly sure what to say about the enchanting market. On one hand, I want to say that the profession had trouble with pacing, just like jewelcrafting. But on the other, I think that the enchanting market was pretty smooth throughout Cataclysm. We got all the best weapon enchants early, but it worked. Prices stayed appropriately expensive for the good stuff and appropriately cheap for the not-as-good stuff.
Part of me wants more new enchants as new patches come out, much the same way tailors and blacksmiths get new patterns. But the other part of me didn't really mind not getting them in Cataclysm.
Alchemy, meanwhile, performed similarly to enchanting. We didn't really get new stuff as the expansion progressed, but that was OK. Potion making remained profitable. Transmutes remained worth it. And one final compliment: Refreshing the alchemy specialty quests was a great idea, and I don't think you get enough credit for revisiting stuff like that. Bravo.
... now, your turn to chime in
Listen guys -- and I'm talking to you commenters now -- this is crunch time. This week's press event means that Blizzard is in prime development mode. If we want our voices heard on the economy, now is the time, because they don't tinker with economic matters the way they do with class balance. (Which is sort of a shame, but I digress.)
So, sound off. What did you think Blizzard did right this time around with professions? Are there any mechanics you want to stick around? And on the flip side, what profession needs the most TLC from developers? How would you fix what's wrong?
Maximize your profits with advice from Gold Capped. Want to know the very best ways to earn 10,000 gold? Top gold making strategies for auctioneers? How about how to reach 1 million gold -- or how one player got there and then gave it all away? Fox and Basil are taking your questions at fox@wowinsider.com and basil@wowinsider.com.
Filed under: Economy, Gold Capped
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 11)
jmyoung Mar 14th 2012 9:53AM
how did they delay you?
Dan Z. Mar 15th 2012 10:30AM
Because it required Chaos Orb which required you to run heroic dungeons which you could not do until you were fully leveled and somewhat geared.
Simpsons Rule Mar 12th 2012 3:13PM
I'll throw in a complaint about Enchanting and Jewelcrafting. The best wrist enchants are world drops. The best meta gems are also world drops. Having run numerous alts through Cataclysm zones, I haven't found any of the six possible BoE patterns. All the ones I obtained had to be purchased on the Auction House.
I know you felt grinding dailies wasn't fun, but if the option is a world drop or daily grinding, I'll choose daily grinding ever time. There's measurable progress that's made with daily grinding which is completely lacking when trying to farm a world drop or stalking the auction house.
Also, for Inscription, Blizzard went the entire expansion without a solution to the Book of Glyph Mastery problem. They could have made the books drop in Cataclysm zones too, or implemented their plan of making the glyphs learnable through a once-a-day research ability, but it did nothing. The barrier to entry for a new scribe is insanely high.
Noyou Mar 12th 2012 3:44PM
I agree with you on that one. They could give an option to buy the high end designs for say 30 JC tokens. At least then you will be guaranteed to get them at some point. 30 days seems like good enough time (maybe too long considering you would need the tokens for other designs).
Bril Mar 12th 2012 5:23PM
Keeping the Book of Glyph Mastery a Northrend-only drop had to be an economic decision, to provide a minor gold sink. If it wasn't I can only hope that decision was made by one of the people who got laid off.
So many BiS recipes locked away in those books...
Frank Mar 12th 2012 6:57PM
They did make glyph a learnable once a day thing. Northrend Inscription Research and Minor Inscription Research. I'm doing that every day now.
Boobah Mar 12th 2012 7:14PM
On the world drop recipes: Not much of a problem, IMO, although your server economy (and your place in it) makes a difference. Personally, I had a big enough nest egg that I had all those recipes within a week or two of them going live, and had more than paid off the investment a week or two later.
That said, I, too, am disappointed in the repeated 'we'll get it next patch, honest' on the Books of Glyph Mastery. It was good for me,, I'd gotten them cheap during Wrath, but was obviously bad for anyone trying to play catch-up post 4.0.
A gold sink takes gold out of the economy, it doesn't move it to other people; therefore, that roadblock for glyphs might qualify as a veteran's reward, but it isn't a gold sink.
andrews Mar 12th 2012 7:31PM
It is not a gold sink, since the gold remains in the game.
The books were also still necessary since you could not learn some glyphs without them.
Noyou Mar 12th 2012 8:53PM
One thing I noticed on the glyph research is- you can hit a wall on it, but as you level up, more glyphs become available. For instance, I was not getting any DK minor glyphs until I got to around 250 or so (whenever you learn the prime/major ones). I don't know if this was always the case or if it changed. I still don't have a dozen or so glyphs on my main scribe. And he has done all the research he can without getting useless scrolls. He has probably learned 10-12 from books as well. Someday he will know them all. Right before they scrap the glyph system probably :p
Domintal Mar 12th 2012 3:15PM
I have both JC and Engineering, and booy do I agree with you on the two of those.
eel5pe Mar 12th 2012 3:18PM
The prevailing model for Vanilla and BC was "raiders get stuff, non-raiders don't". Come late Wrath and Cata this became "raiders get stuff first, non-raiders get them later". There's no reason not to do this for craftables too. For example right now the 378 patterns and Embers should all be available for JP. 397 patterns and EoD should be available for VP. A significant problem on smaller servers like mine is that there are some patterns which literally no one in your faction has.
And because I know it's going to come up- a strong NO to Engineering goggles leveling up every tier. Near-BiS goggles for free every tier would be way better than the benefits every other profession provides. Maybe be able to craft the previous tier's equivalent.
Oh and for the love of Grod make some useful minor glyphs for Paladins.
Noyou Mar 12th 2012 3:38PM
Totally agree with you. Crafters should get entry level gear at max level. Everyone should be on the same playing field. Crafters can use the gear for 3/4 of the expac while the raiders will replace it half way thru the first patch. It seems it would balance itself out.
loop_not_defined Mar 12th 2012 3:45PM
At the very least, half of 4.3's new raiding recipes should have dropped from LFR.
In Blacksmithing's case, bracer recipes should've been accessible to all versions, especially since any 5-man dungeon runner could purchase 397 VP bracers. Similarly, Essences of Destruction probably should have dropped in LFR (although less sure on this point).
Tauren Fan Mar 12th 2012 3:48PM
Fair point about the goggles eel5pe. If I remember correctly, the Synapse Springs tinker for your gloves can deliver the +80 stat that seems to have been the standard bonus across the crafting professions, and with it being a controlled burst one could argue that it's actually superior since you can choose when to use it to maximum effect. Alchemists didn't get higher i-level trinkets (at least not that I know of) and the i359 helms were nice for helping toons get geared up at 85. They are still a wonderful bonus for a fresh 85 who would like to jump directly into the kinder, gentler 4.3 heroics and is trying to make the i353 requirement.
For engineering, it didn't really feel like we got enough new, fun toys, but of course things like the parachute tinker and Jeeves are still as useful as ever so maybe we didn't really need more stuff. As long as a new wormhole generator for Pandaria is introduced, my engineering toon will be happy!
Homeschool Mar 12th 2012 5:57PM
I don't feel like Engineering goggles need to be best-in-spec on every tier, or even any tier. I'm okay if they fall in the middle - not the worst in the tier, not the best in the tier. Seems like they're always either amazing or pathetic.
Perhaps the problem is that they haven't yet tried for that middle ground.
Mechakisc Mar 12th 2012 6:41PM
"a strong NO to Engineering goggles leveling up every tier"
My contention has been and will be that new or leveled up goggles should require the current tier's crafting item.
The pattern being a BOE drop might work too. I for one don't want to get BIS helm at the start of a tier, but I surely WOULD like goggles every tier.
Stilhelm Mar 12th 2012 8:46PM
I think all crafters should be able to upgrade their crafted items every tier. In BC, blacksmiths had a armorsmithing chest they could make, and upgrade to higher levels, presumably for each tier.
For example, blacksmiths could craft a 359 epic belt, chest, and shield, for various specs (tank, dps, heals). Why not allow those items, or one of those items, to be upgradeable to the current tier. It could be made BoP, to make it a crafter-only perk. Just let crafters do *something* for themselves every tier so it feels semi-useful to have the profession. Why should I only be able to make goggles for the first tier? I want to be able to upgrade those to the current tier. What's one piece of gear? Chances are, we're going to get one piece the first week a new tier is available anyway.
SamLowry Mar 13th 2012 12:20AM
"At the very least, half of 4.3's new raiding recipes should have dropped from LFR."
I get the feeling that there's a contingent out there who want to ensure the LFR is regarded like the bunny hill at a ski resort. If something USEFUL actually dropped then there would be a tremendous uproar.
eel5pe Mar 13th 2012 9:58AM
Kinda hitting on two issues here.
LFR gives you "useful" things already, namely VP. Just like how LFR benefits raiders by giving people passing familiarity with fights, disseminating patterns would benefit raiders by making craftable patterns more accessible. Raiders complaining about LFR dropping "useful" things wouldn't really have a leg to stand on.
But no bones about it- LFR IS a bunny hill. Hell, on the bunny hill there's at least a chance of falling. LFR is the skiing simulator in the arcade back at the lodge.
JattTheRogue Mar 13th 2012 10:08AM
"And because I know it's going to come up- a strong NO to Engineering goggles leveling up every tier. Near-BiS goggles for free every tier would be way better than the benefits every other profession provides. Maybe be able to craft the previous tier's equivalent. "
I'm confused. How is giving engineering an updated helm every tier way more powerful than all the other armor the other professions create each tier? Each other armor crafting profession has multiple craftable items of an equivalent ilevel as the current raid tier, and you're saying letting engineering make a helm each tier would be overpowered? Makes no sense.