In Shadowlands, the professions of World of Warcraft become interesting again. Blizzard has many new (and old) ideas to properly enhance professions.
Crafting professions in World of Warcraft have been consistently neglected over the past years. For several expansions now, a (at least quite vocal) part of the player base has complained that professions are irrelevant and the crafted gear is, in most cases, junk to be replaced by the first heroic dungeon.
However, this is supposed to change with the new WoW expansion Shadowlands. We at MeinMMO have taken a first look at the professions and show what changes with Shadowlands.
The changes to professions in WoW: Shadowlands
Keep in mind that the following information is from the beta. Parts of it may still change before release. If you want to participate in the beta yourself, you can sign up here.
Crafting professions need help from other players: The most important change first. All professions in Shadowlands rely on the help of fellow players. It is no longer enough to just have a crafting profession and a gathering profession – interaction with other players is mandatory.
For example, jewelcrafters require a setting for their best gems that can only be made by blacksmiths.
Items can receive upgrades: The most exciting change may be that you can use additional components and materials when crafting an item.
These optional materials provide additional effects to items. For example, you can increase the item level by up to 20 with a scroll (which you obtain from scribes). A special thread from tailors can add frost damage protection, and a little gadget from engineers can give your bracers a use effect with fire damage.
Especially cool: You can even determine the secondary stats of armor (Critical Strike Rating, Haste, Versatility, Mastery). To do this, you need to add jewels with the corresponding values during crafting.
All these additional components are not mandatory, but they make items significantly stronger. So it’s worth knowing a player or two from each crafting profession – or covering everything with alts yourself.
There are many more crafting materials: Another thing is that you can already start cleaning out your resource bank. Shadowlands brings a plethora of crafting materials, significantly more than in Battle for Azeroth.
For each area, there is a unique ore and herb as well as many different types of leather. Anyone wanting to craft something and wants to do it themselves will have to travel around all the areas of Shadowlands and gather something from each zone.
What else has changed? Aside from these major changes, there are also several smaller adjustments worth mentioning:
- All crafting professions can create legendary items. However, these are still unfinished in the game, so a preview is not possible.
- Ranks of individual crafts seem to have disappeared (the “star levels”). You no longer need three ranks of each recipe.
- The additional components will also be available for old content. So classic items or those from Battle for Azeroth can also be upgraded in this way.
- Enchantments can be applied to many more slots. There are enchantments for gloves, shoes, weapons, pants, rings, and more.
Will everything be better now? Whether the many changes will fulfill the wishes of the players and make professions attractive even in the endgame remains to be seen.
In any case, profession fans will need to interact with other players or play many alts to be self-sufficient. This is a good foundation for social interaction and a nice way to make good gold in the auction house.
But the whole system stands and falls with whether professions still have relevance in the endgame or if, after crafting a legendary item, only jewelcrafters, enchanters, and alchemists are needed, as has been the case for years.
Will this solve the problems that have led to MMORPGs not being as popular anymore?
What do you think about the planned changes to crafting in World of Warcraft? Are these cool changes, or is it rather annoying not to be able to handle everything on your own anymore?
