Whats your thoughts on professions, It's a hard choice as you can only take two major ones ?
My opinion (I'll keep it short)
Crafting professions are a funny thing. I feel the system could have been done much better, BUT IT'S AMAZING how good it keeps the economy and Auction house alive !
I don't like to craft in any game, too much of a time sink that keeps me away from adventuring. However a player would starve without taking two professions. I play with the mindset of harvesting to supply the crafters.
Economy,
They hit the mark and nailed it on their first try. Classic World of Warcraft had a perfect balance of combat difficulty with skill and gear. Games today have no need for crafting as their easy along with everything given to the player. Add that the player out levels everything in one hour.
At low levels you had no money, you ran around with all trash gear (white), but as you hit level 17 you needed better stuff, but at the same time most would have the perfect wealth to afford what you needed from the auction house. Better yet, around 17 is when you could run dungeons and collect better stuff (greens and blues). Keep what you need sell the rest.
Everything about this game is well balanced !
Comments
How about first aid and cooking then? You can make bandages of various level and they all work in the same way. Same with the antidotes, and they are even fewer than bandages. How come they don't need other mats than cloth and spider venom? Cooking recipes are all the same. Some are good for regen health but most of them gives you a nice buff, but it's always +spi + sta with only a handful of exceptions.
Enchanting? There is not a single low level enchant that makes any difference. It's so underwhelming it's not even funny. You keep de'ing greens for dust and shards only to level up this prof and hope some day you can make +7 weapon damage or the crusader.
I could go on and on. It certainly seems like the development ran out of time and they just had to put something together, and even then they managed to do better work than many other MMORPGs have done. But balanced..? No way.
Now this is where I come in, I make a killing on selling hurbs, skins or ore to those that try
I'll probably do the same in the beginning and level up blacksmithing later. First character on a fresh server is always the toughest one.
so if you were doing Alchemy then you need herbing
Now, when it goes live i will do (what most might) is take both herbing and Skinning and gather like mad to sell the mats, then as i get higher up the food chain then move to either Leather Working or alchemy (Quaz since 2008 has had max alchemy even today still does whilst he rests in limbo of no account)
The cooking is a guarantee it used to make nice money on AH so was handy to level up as you go and of course the obvious buffs,
First Aid is a given as it saves 100s of gold in long run over taking pots or food to regen health (but for me its not that important as i will be a shammy , and res shammy at top levels )
But, First aid helped me get my first mount back in the days, i used to buy the super cheap cloth and make it into bandages to then sell at vendor as a profit could be had at right price, and yes i was also found making 1000s of bandages on top of ogrimmar bank
But, does WoW do it right, i think with the game industry as it was, its not far wrong, has it been done better since then yes of course (my all time has the single best crafting / industry which is EvE)
WoW's market used to be decent and looking forward to each server having their own market as it will make some interesting pricing and profit to be had
This post is all my opinion, but I welcome debate on anything i have put, however, personal slander / name calling belongs in game where of course you're welcome to call me names im often found lounging about in EvE online.
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The key to it NOT being efficient is in your opening statement... Thank you, never realized that.
"A crafting profession uses up one valuable slot of the given two"
But their is a second problem associated with NOT being efficient. Material gathering is stunted or held back by harvest gathering level. It gets worst !!!..... Your adventuring level prevents you from going to higher level zones to gather the good stuff.
Crafting on first character is simply NOT GOOD.
With this in mind:
Your second character could feed off your first harvester character. More efficient is to resist the temptation to make two characters simultaneously, but one to a higher level then start the other.
Even then, your second character will not be a money maker by crafting until higher levels.
Their is another alternative. Guild members or a crafting and harvesting network could supply the materials. This could be fun if this is your style of play and you don't consider the work involved as a negative. Extremely non-efficient, but a lifestyle alternative..... Much luck is involved on ultimately making 90 gold by level 40 depending on knowing this art and others involved. It's also a way of being social
Most efficient would be:
1 ) Start with a free mount class (Paladin or Warlock).
2 ) Skinning and Herbalism or Mining.
3 ) Play the auction house to gain income for second character with materials.
4 ) If done right, your second character should be rich from level one.
5 ) Become more wealthy with second character by crafting.
6 ) Your first character can supply all the high end needs for materials.
7 ) Your third character can do the fun crafting, such as engineering or enchanting. As long as your first two bank and save the rare findings they accumulate through adventuring.
12 slot bags and up is one good source. However I'm sure others know the money makers better than I do.
Grind ?..... Time investment ?..... Jobs and no free time ?
Sounds like this is ONLY A YOU PROBLEM !...... I notice you bring up no time to waist for every game mentioned. This is truly a selfish statement you keep saying often.
So all the old ways of farming are now trumped by the exploit created by the modern WoW engine driving vanilla WoW.
People are already inflating the prices of things on the beta server auction house. Back in the day asking 1 gold for a Deadly Blunderbuss was the norm... expensive for that level, but the norm. On Classic Beta they are pricing it at 4 gold. Modern gamers playing vanilla WoW.