More than Two

[Annoying]

I´m thinking of enchanting instead of herbalism, but i really dont want to loose my way to support
alchemy.

I love engineering, and would think of ditching mining for engineering. But it would be stupid
to drop mining to not be able to support myself.

Use the professions to support yourself. Buying materials is often cheaper than farming them. If you spend 2 hours farming the equivalent of 1000g worth of minerals, but can make 2000g in those 2 hours by buying raw gems and cutting more expensive cuts, then the simple act of farming makes for a waste of time. The same goes for alchemy. If you spend 2 hours farming 1000g worth of herbs, but can make 2000g by buying mats for flasks or speed pots and crafting and reselling them, the herbing is only hindering you instead of "supporting yourself".

The price of raw materials on an auction house is determined by those who are the best or most dedicated at obtaining them. Be it gold farmers or someone with the optimal titanium mining path in a certain zone, they will determine what the herbs/minerals/leather is worth, and often that worth is much less than you can afford to sell them or gather them at. Farming something doesn't make it "free", and all costs (including time) should be taken into account when talking about supporting yourself.

[Raqubor]

"You provided an example of the daily life of the gatherer with not a shred of support for why such a lifestyle is advantageous or would change with your suggestion."

World PvP. While you are hunting the opposite faction you can gather. So the time you spend looking for people to kill as actually not wasted 100%, just 50%, but if we count the fun factor it's not a waste at all.
That's how i am, and no i'm not one of those who provide cheap materials. I had an alt who was a skinner/herber, because i could not be bothered to make a proper profession for him. I kept farming skins with him when i was bored, and i was literally the only one, maybe one or two other people who made Heavy Borean Leather. I sold a stack of those for 180-200g, not to mention the meat i gathered and the bunch of grey trash i sold for a few 10 golds.
(before you ask, i had an LW friend who made me heavy leather from my normals for free)

And since Sholazar is crowded with farmers, i was in an area where two Saronite and a titanium node popped up usually, so every enemy that landed there was brutally murdered (by my rogue)(thank you shadowstep for making me able to ambush them before they can mount up...).

Plus waht you don't take in to consideration is that just because you make a bunch of glyphs, doesn't mean they will all sell, fast. Unless you undercut others, meaning you sell cheaper, but why would anyone buy glyphs more than once? Even if people have two specs, they get a set of glyphs they need and after that there is no need to buy anymore.

[Armond]

World PvP. While you are hunting the opposite faction you can gather. So the time you spend looking for people to kill as actually not wasted 100%, just 50%, but if we count the fun factor it's not a waste at all.

But, as Annoying said just above you, you need to be making at least as much gold/hour as other professions could get you in the time it took you to do that to make it worthwhile. The problem is since materials sell so cheaply, that's almost never the case. Like I said, those five to seven seconds you spend gathering could be spent on crafting, which is usually more profitable.

That's how i am, and no i'm not one of those who provide cheap materials. I had an alt who was a skinner/herber, because i could not be bothered to make a proper profession for him. I kept farming skins with him when i was bored, and i was literally the only one, maybe one or two other people who made Heavy Borean Leather. I sold a stack of those for 180-200g, not to mention the meat i gathered and the bunch of grey trash i sold for a few 10 golds.
(before you ask, i had an LW friend who made me heavy leather from my normals for free)

This is a very unique situation - near-monopoly of a certain market and an assistant who values his time at zero. Even so, I hope it only took you around ten (maybe fifteen) minutes to get that stack of heavy borean leather, or you were wasting your time.

If you provide materials, it's probably at cheap prices.

And since Sholazar is crowded with farmers, i was in an area where two Saronite and a titanium node popped up usually, so every enemy that landed there was brutally murdered (by my rogue)(thank you shadowstep for making me able to ambush them before they can mount up...).

Again, unless you're making around 1k gold/hour, you're wasting your time (IMO; you might value your time at less, but...).

Plus waht you don't take in to consideration is that just because you make a bunch of glyphs, doesn't mean they will all sell, fast. Unless you undercut others, meaning you sell cheaper, but why would anyone buy glyphs more than once? Even if people have two specs, they get a set of glyphs they need and after that there is no need to buy anymore.

I do take that into consideration, thanks. Amazingly enough, around 70% of my glyphs sell even at reasonably high prices (10g+). I have absolutely no idea why people buy so many glyphs; maybe it's because people make lots of alts, or change specs often, or trade one terrible glyph for another.

This isn't unique to glyphs, though - all you have to do is find one market that's profitable and stick with it to make gathering professions a waste of time. Netherweave (and sometimes Frostweave) bags, mongoose scrolls, belt buckles, flasks, gems, even in some cases crafted PvP gear - all these and more sell way more often and for much more than they should, and time spent gathering materials instead of buying them is time wasted because of the huge profit you can make.

[ungar]

People that consider taking gathering professions at level cap make me sad.

About the effects on the economy: They'd be caused by people with crafting professions. Mining/Skinning/Herbalism wouldn't affect the economy nearly as much as Jewelcrafting/Enchanting/Alchemy (or perhaps Inscription over Alchemy, depends on how the glyphs turn out). I'm assuming a cap on three professions for the sake of argument; it'll get my point across with less work.

In the current economy, gathering professions aren't useful because half the players on any given server think they're the best way to make money. They're not wrong until they reach Northrend, but hey, we'll let them live their ironic little lives.

Because of this (and partly because of bots), supply of materials is high and prices are somewhat low. I'm sure everyone here has tried flying around Scholazar Basin or Storm Peaks at least once; unless you're on a super small server, your gold/hour is reduced further by random people swooping in and getting mines/herbs before you could.

Because of all this, smart players use other professions to make money. Buying a stack of herbs off the auction house saves you the time it would take you to farm it yourself (disregarding travel time to and from the Basin or the Peaks or wherever); I'd spend 25 gold on a stack of Icethorn to save myself ten minutes. I'm "spending" 150g/hour in opportunity cost, tops. I can then use that Icethorn to make glyphs; making a single glyph costs around nine seconds (to mill, craft, post, and gather from mail) and sells for around seven gold. You do the math. (Remember to include the price of Snowfall ink.)

Other professions do the same thing; making a scroll of whatever enchantment costs ten seconds (or eight seconds plus the cost of the vellum if that's cheaper) plus the cost of materials (some of which are free if you get them from random heroics you have other reasons for doing) and sell for a fair amount. Same goes for Jewelcrafting and Alchemy.

In fairness, however, your hours spent farming aren't limited. The gold per week and gold per month from crafting professions is limited by how much supply you can get on the AH, how much demand there is for your product, how much (or little) you're willing to work for, and how quickly you burn out from grinding out 2531656 recipes every two days. Farming only faces the burnout and demand problems. Crafters buy materials to last them in the event that prices rise and will often have a week's worth of material stockpiled; raiders buy product pretty much only when they must.

The best that extra profession slots would do for the economy is equalize everyone's gold/hour (likely down to the level of dailies). More likely, however, people will continue to be dumb and use the opportunity to take extra gathering professions, granting more supply to the crafters and making slightly more money themselves. They'd then use that money to buy things from the crafters and spend their spare times on the forums QQing about how people price glyphs/gems/enchantments/whatever so high when it's impossible to make enough money, or about people undercutting them, or whatever it is bads do on the official forums these days.

There is a gulf between the rich and the poor that is dependent entirely upon the intelligence of the people in the market. The bigger the gap in intelligence, the bigger the gap in wealth. If everyone were equally well informed, extra professions would close that gap faster - but it would close on its own anyway.

Edit: For clarification, the gap would close because competition in the crafting professions would increase supply of the product, reducing prices to the point where those professions wouldn't have ridiculously high gold/hour, and increasing the price of materials due to decreased supply (decreased number of farmers). Eventually an equilibrium would be reached where using any profession intelligently would yield the same gold/hour. (It won't happen.)

long posts, not really interested in reading :P

I've read a few posts and get the gist of the argument. so I feel qualified to comment, ha. basically, the thread hijacker is suggesting gathering professions aren't a wise choice because their perks aren't as strong as crafting professions and they aren't as profitable on his server. you're right that different servers vary. I think crafting professions are some of the most economically profitable professions, of course the supply and therefore competition depends on the amount of players who have any profession, amount of gatherers and supply of mats vs amount of crafters and demand for mats.

Gathering can be the most profitable because it doesn't require an investment to level up and acquire recipes and mats. farming for mats can require time investment, though farming while leveling or traveling through a zone, achievements, etc doesn't require additional time investment. therefore with reasonable demand in a stable market ore, herbs can be extremely profitable. the professional farmers who do nothing but farm for gold to sell for real world money hurt the economy, though from another person's perspective you may be the "dumb" one for spending hours farming or crafting for no tangible benefits while those "dumb farmers" you don't like actually make real money. I don't advocate gold farming, though it depends on the perspective. I realize this is just your opinion, though you have to realize that its not the only opinion, and what you think is right and true, probably isn't in the grand scheme of things.

you said you sold a glyph for 7 gold, and when I quickly skimmed your post, I wasn't sure if you were saying inscription isn't profitable as another profession because of the cost of snowfall ink and the glyph only sells for 7 gold? it would depend on supply and demand and the market. on my server I could sell glyphs for more than 60 gold till the ICC came out. from my perspective its not smart to sell a glyph for 7 gold when you could sell it for 60 gold. (and you could if you truely understood how the AH works. if someone wants a glyph and they took time to search AH for it, they wont spend 8 gold? or 10 gold? or they'll wait until it posts for only 7 gold to get a deal? no, if someone wants a glyph and they have 2000 gold they'll spend 60 without thinking twice.

every profession is worth something to someone, maybe not to you, but if everyone took your advice you wouldn't be able to craft anything because there would be no supply.

if half of the gatherers switched to crafting BS items how profitable would it be? which profession would be the smart choice then? would you drop BS if none of your epics sold due to competition? or if a patch lowered the required mithril/thorium to level blacksmithing to comparable levels with other profession's mats. then there would be more people competing and less dropping BS, and the market would take a dive... smart and dumb are relative to the times and market. yes, its better for a player to be adaptable, though gathering professions are still the most profitable (after considering investments) with reasonable crafting competition. with reasonable competition your epic wont be the only one in the AH (I say you get lucky that at any given time BS isn't as competitive as other professions and blizzard hasn't corrected this) and you could invest a bit of time in posting, undercutting, gathering mats (from AH).

IMO professions have cycles, dependent on the climate of the game, after a new patch one profession will be more profitable, towards the end of an expansion or during a new content slump when players don't need the crafted epics as much because they can get better level 80 epics from getting carried through raids, your crafting professions will not be as desirable as, say crafting professions that are saving their raw mats to sell to would be new goblin/worgen/tauren paladin, etc alts leveling professions. with cataclysm the raw mats in the newer zones will likely be in limited supply comapred to the amount of gatherers, yet still there will be many more crafters leveling professions than gatherers and the mats will increase. in the long run the markets have ups and downs, just because blacksmith profitability peaks at certain points after new patches release new recipes and those epics are BiS, doesn't mean BS is always profitable when people don't need those epics anymore.

The disparity between rich and poor, like in the real world is usually not due to intelligence, but more often due to access to resources and opportunity. the playing field is even for the most part, though an 8 year old who knows nothing about crafting or playing the AH, sees someone post primordial saronite for 2000g or 5000g or whatever the demand is on the server, if he had opportunity to acquire the drop he could be more rich than someone posting glyphs at 7g each.

were things equal and everyone had access to equal opportunity, sure, intelligence would be a huge factor, though someone who's a genius and level 75 or hasn't been playing for years and doesn't have 80's would most likely not be as rich as someone who has 4 80's maxed professions, raids and according to you would otherwise be considered "dumb"

TL;DR In short, you're wrong. the smart ones have gathering and profit more in the long run, IMHO.

EDIT: on topic, as for a third profession, I think it would create much more supply and competition in the long run, and have serious implications on the economy. overall, it would be a gold sink in the short term, not because it costs 5000 gold to buy a 3rd profession slot, but because people are leveling a third profession (all gathering would pick up a crafting profession) and in the long run it would create so much undercutting and competition that prices would plummet. people would be storing gold as they wouldn't need to spend it on anything, inflation would occur, the economy would change dramatically (I assume for the worse) as everyone has 10k-50k gold on them at any given time. what would they spend it on? now they'd need a real gold sink... they'd have to create some new item or something in high demand or increase, say repair costs or flight master fees, or whatnot... it would be a mess IMO.

I appreciate that you want another profession on your main... I do too, but I don't think ti would be "best" for the game in the long run for many reasons. I think specializations could be a better way to go, but blizzard thinks differently in favor of drops.

[Armond]

stuff

I was willing to contest your post point by point (even though you've missed the core of my argument, it's still mostly on topic) until I realized you don't understand basic WoW economics. (I've only addressed about half as much as I was going to.)

My argument is thus: Extra profession slots will widen the gap between the rich and the poor due to the majority of players not knowing how to use professions to make money. (Your claim of thread hijacking is fail, by the way - no one's been on topic since they misread my first wall of text.) "Smart and dumb" is related, but not core, to this. That said, "smart, dumb, lesser dumb, and super dumb" would be more accurate. Smart would be the player who uses his professions to make as much money as he can, usually by dropping gathering professions. Dumb is the player who goes "hurr I'll farm saronite in sholazurr cuz its popular so it has to be good". Lesser dumb is the player who uses whatever professions he has as intelligently as he can. (This would probably be better called "average" or something, but I have a thing for raging at myself for my past mistakes, so I'm calling it this so I can call myself dumb.) Super dumb is the DK who didn't pick up any professions because he didn't want to put in the effort to level them before Outland, or the player who stopped bothering to level his professions around level 30.

I have yet to see a single server in which gathering professions are more profitable than crafting professions. This is generally because crafted items sell for more than their material cost and because gathering takes so damn long, even without competition. Your assumption that I'm speaking about "my server" is wrong, and if you'd read any gold making sites (the good ones, not the ones that make you pay $14.95 for tips like "stalk the auction house for 10 hours a day to undercut people by 1 copper"), you'd know that.

Gathering can be the most profitable because it doesn't require an investment to level up and acquire recipes and mats. farming for mats can require time investment, though farming while leveling or traveling through a zone, achievements, etc doesn't require additional time investment. therefore with reasonable demand in a stable market ore, herbs can be extremely profitable.

Gathering professions require time investments to level just like other professions. I don't know why you claim it takes no investment and then say that farming for mats (essentially the same process as leveling the gathering profession in question) requires a time investment. Every herb you pick costs you between three and ten seconds, depending on what you're breaking away from, regardless of what you were doing before. The reason gathering professions are advantageous while leveling is because your opportunity cost is generally low - buying mats off the AH takes at least five seconds, and the mats you buy would have to craft into something profitable (not usually the case with low skill levels).

With reasonable demand in a stable market, you can make 10k or so while leveling to 80 with gathering professions. (That's possibly a bit low, but it matches my experiences. YMMV; if you spend a lot of your time in the dungeon finder, you'll probably make less, and if you grind mobs instead of questing, you'll probably make more. Again, it's all opportunity cost.)

I think you are also mixing up gross profit and gold per hour. I have mentioned that farming can result in a higher gross profit if the market for crafted products is not favorable to spending many hours crafting. However - and I realize this is opinion - I value my time (since I don't have a whole lot of it), and so gold per hour is more important to me.

you said you sold a glyph for 7 gold, and when I quickly skimmed your post, I wasn't sure if you were saying inscription isn't profitable as another profession because of the cost of snowfall ink and the glyph only sells for 7 gold?

No, I was using Inscription as an example for the opportunity cost of spending your time gathering. (Inscription is how I made my money. I use it in examples because I'm most familiar with it.) You can spend nine seconds running to an herb that's within your line of sight, or you could spend those nine seconds picking items up from the mailbox, milling herbs, making inks, crafting glyphs, and finally posting glyphs. (It'll average out to around eight seconds per glyph, plus another second to pick up the gold after the sale - but everyone has to spend that second.) When you gather, though, you get, what, three or four herbs per node? That'll sell for 4.5-6g, compared to the glyph's 7g+. I'm not accounting for the time spent buying herbs at the AH, though - that'll add another, say, 90 seconds to your total time. Those 90 seconds are made moot by the thousand or so glyphs you craft with those herbs. The time you spend flying from node to node, however, is not so insignificant.

You can use other professions, if you want. Calculate the time you spend making a bag, a flask, or whatever (including the average time per product to gather materials, make the product, post the auctions - generally with batch posting - and gather the gold after the sale), and then do the same for gathering professions. I won't do the math for you, since I know how it ends and I'm lazy.

it would depend on supply and demand and the market. on my server I could sell glyphs for more than 60 gold till the ICC came out. from my perspective its not smart to sell a glyph for 7 gold when you could sell it for 60 gold. (and you could if you truely understood how the AH works. if someone wants a glyph and they took time to search AH for it, they wont spend 8 gold? or 10 gold? or they'll wait until it posts for only 7 gold to get a deal? no, if someone wants a glyph and they have 2000 gold they'll spend 60 without thinking twice.

I don't understand how you can quote supply and demand at me and then fail at applying it. If I see a glyph on the AH for 60g, I'll wait a few hours before getting it because I know that other players will undercut to 15g or less. Remember, increased price means decreased demand and thus fewer sales. Decreased price - even 15g would be appropriate in your situation - means increased demand and increased sales. (Don't try to tell me "people only need 12 glyphs per character". It might be true in some cases, but it's usually not, and for whatever reason it doesn't stop people buying a billion glyphs off the AH.)

Many players don't have 2,000 gold. Many players are in the 200-500g range. (There was a poll somewhere on MMO-C about that, but I can't find it right now. I'm quoting the results as I remember them, and I could be wrong - but I really don't think so.) These people will (should) think twice before spending 60g on a glyph when they can wait a few hours and get it for 75% off.

Finally, you're a monopolist, it seems, and I'm a deep undercutter. See here for more information.

every profession is worth something to someone, maybe not to you, but if everyone took your advice you wouldn't be able to craft anything because there would be no supply.

if half of the gatherers switched to crafting BS items how profitable would it be? which profession would be the smart choice then?

As I said, if there's a mass surge towards crafting professions, smart players will switch to gathering professions because it will offer more gold per hour (due to increased demand and decreased supply both driving prices up). As I also said, in an ideal situation the market would reach an equilibrium where any profession would be a viable choice for making money, and smart application of any profession would yield an approximately equal amount of gold per hour.

Again, as I said, I don't see that happening any time soon (unless the only place to sell both gathered and crafted products suddenly becomes NPCs who buy them at a fixed price).

The disparity between rich and poor, like in the real world is usually not due to intelligence, but more often due to access to resources and opportunity. the playing field is even for the most part, though an 8 year old who knows nothing about crafting or playing the AH, sees someone post primordial saronite for 2000g or 5000g or whatever the demand is on the server, if he had opportunity to acquire the drop he could be more rich than someone posting glyphs at 7g each.

My only comment on IRL economics will be that access to resources and opportunity can be controlled, and intelligence is the major factor in doing so. Want proof? I'm an absolute shitter who spent four years of high school and two years of college wasting his life away, and when I realized how deep a hole I'd dug myself, I got out there and started working at fixing my life. I now have two jobs and am doing reasonably well for myself, and I value my schoolwork and the ways I can apply what I learn.

Posting glyphs at 7g (minimum) can get you far more than the 5k gold of a Primordial Saronite. Just saying.

were things equal and everyone had access to equal opportunity, sure, intelligence would be a huge factor, though someone who's a genius and level 75 or hasn't been playing for years and doesn't have 80's would most likely not be as rich as someone who has 4 80's maxed professions, raids and according to you would otherwise be considered "dumb"

A smart player can make more in an hour at level 75 than an ignorant or unskilled player can with eight maxed professions. A smart level 15 character can have enough gold to pay for his level 20 and 40 mounts and training. It's not hard if you know what you're doing (and maybe are willing to do a bit of research).

Please take the time to read the whole post. It will (hopefully) clear up a number of the incorrect interpretations of what I've said that you've been working under.

---------- Post added 2010-07-31 at 06:39 AM ----------

Use the professions to support yourself. Buying materials is often cheaper than farming them. If you spend 2 hours farming the equivalent of 1000g worth of minerals, but can make 2000g in those 2 hours by buying raw gems and cutting more expensive cuts, then the simple act of farming makes for a waste of time. The same goes for alchemy. If you spend 2 hours farming 1000g worth of herbs, but can make 2000g by buying mats for flasks or speed pots and crafting and reselling them, the herbing is only hindering you instead of "supporting yourself".

This is an excellent explanation of the fallacy of getting more for the same amount of work done. A complementary profession does not increase the value of your other profession; a complementary profession does the same thing as any other profession - it provides you with additional work to do to gain more gold.

[Deleted]

This won't be good for the economy.

[ungar]

I've only addressed about half as much as I was going to.)

Good. We appreciate that.

My argument is thus: Extra profession slots will widen the gap between the rich and the poor due to the majority of players not knowing how to use professions to make money.

No, your first reply to the OP was that "People that consider taking gathering professions at level cap make me sad." the OP post was suggesting an additional third profession slot and to keep things stable, he suggested a max of two crafting professions, to keep the economy stable, the third slot would have to be gathering, because 3 crafting professions would be overpowered... I suggested that gatherers would pick up an extra crafting profession as their third and further destabilize the economy.

Your claim of thread hijacking is fail, by the way - no one's been on topic since they misread my first wall of text.)"Smart and dumb" is related, but not core, to this. That said, "smart, dumb, lesser dumb, and super dumb" would be more accurate.

LOL, you did hijack the thread, by your own admission no one has been "on topic" because the responses are to your post which isn't on topic, and you wont stop typing. the first person to talk about the intelligence of players, viability of gathering professions' profitability was you. the OP said nothing about profitability of gathering professions or which profession is better than others, the intelligence of people who choose a particular profession, or his bias towards people he thinks are smart and dumb. go reread your own post and see how off topic it is from the OP and the thread title.

Use the professions to support yourself. Buying materials is often cheaper than farming them. If you spend 2 hours farming the equivalent of 1000g worth of minerals, but can make 2000g in those 2 hours by buying raw gems and cutting more expensive cuts, then the simple act of farming makes for a waste of time. The same goes for alchemy. If you spend 2 hours farming 1000g worth of herbs, but can make 2000g by buying mats for flasks or speed pots and crafting and reselling them, the herbing is only hindering you instead of "supporting yourself".

This is an excellent explanation of the fallacy of getting more for the same amount of work done. A complementary profession does not increase the value of your other profession; a complementary profession does the same thing as any other profession - it provides you with additional work to do to gain more gold.

actually a complementary profession does increase the value of a profession if you consider synergy. to the extent that you dont have to acquire mats at a cost more expensive than the market value. just as there's a point when investing an amount of time to farming becomes more costly, buying mats created from another crafted profession because of that profession's profit margin greater than the cost to create the said mats, you save yourself a lot of money. they do complement each other because you don't pay the other mat crafters profit.

Here's an example, consider enchanting/inscription... in order to sell enchants on the AH you need vellum created by a scribe. the scribe can control your profit and the price of your enchants by controlling the inscription market (a lot of people dont realize how lucrative vellums are, therefore not as much competition for them, as say glyphs) if I needed money I would post 5 vellums for 30-50 gold that enchanters needed to create their enchant to be sold on AH. the enchanter would sell a berserk or +10 stats, crusader, or any other profitable enchant for 200-1000 gold, they need the vellum to sell the enchant and 5 gold didn't seem much to an enchanter who would sell their enchant for 1000 gold, or even 200 gold. the vellum costs about 1 gold to make. Vellums would sell extremely well as scribes were competing for the glyph market at 7 g a glyph, undercutting each other. I could make hundreds, sometimes thousands of gold selling dozens of vellums a day in stacks of 5 or 10. because I had a scribe as well as enchanter I didn't have to buy overpriced vellums in order to post my enchants, and occasionally if I wanted to corner the market I could control a lot of the ink/herbs, buy the vellums listed for 2 gold resell them for 5 or even 10 gold, or just not post thm. then the enchanter who wants to compete with me for selling enchants has to find another way to acquire vellums, this takes time and usually my enchants would sell before being undercut.
crafting professions do work together in synergy.

Not even going to take time to respond to the rest, good day to you.

[Crazin]

I would go for this, but the people that are gold capped would have WAY more power then. Also, it would destroy the economy from the inside out.

[Armond]

No, your first reply to the OP was that "People that consider taking gathering professions at level cap make me sad."

That was just my first sentence, not my thesis. Either way, it was mostly just me being dramatic about my opinion (or an asshole, if you want to think about it that way). I do that sometimes. Obviously, the effect is that it distracts from my actual point. I'll try to avoid it in future.

the OP post was suggesting an additional third profession slot and to keep things stable, he suggested a max of two crafting professions, to keep the economy stable, the third slot would have to be gathering, because 3 crafting professions would be overpowered... I suggested that gatherers would pick up an extra crafting profession as their third and further destabilize the economy.

I managed to completely miss that. I have the dumb.

If the limit were three professions, that would work, I guess. But I thought we were considering fourth and even maybe a fifth profession, which would make that all fall apart.

I suppose the people who know how to use and abuse their professions for money wouldn't make too much more than they do now, while also being flexible enough to adapt should a gathering profession suddenly prove profitable. Those that don't... would probably be in about the same situation as now.

That said, I don't think "probably nothing will change much" is a good enough reason to implement a change on this scale.

synergy and vellums stuff

Good point. I thought, however, that a large number of the mats people buy are things like herbs and metal ores and bars (plus things like crusader orbs or primordial saronite or whatever) - basically, things that aren't crafted. That could just be an impression formed by me not delving into those markets very much, though.

...good day to you.

Et tu.

[ComputerNerd]

There have been blue posts addressing this thought, and the idea has been dismissed as something they have no plans for.
Professions like specs, are supossed to be a meaningful decision.
Though while that arguement applies well to the professions, it does not hold well for specs.

[Raqubor]

There have been blue posts addressing this thought, and the idea has been dismissed as something they have no plans for.
Professions like specs, are supossed to be a meaningful decision.
Though while that arguement applies well to the professions, it does not hold well for specs.

Well, things can change, and the way a feature is implemented can make a big difference.

To the above two: interesting debate about profession efectiveness, but my suggestion was not based on effectiveness, but a way to have a third (maybe 4th) profession (only gathering), just for the hell of it. I seriously don't think this would make any kind of difference in the economy, since if someone wanted to farm mats, they used alts for it, now all that changes is that they can do this on their mains (if they cash out).

Even if we agree only on one extra gathering profession, we can sell that for 10k gold, and see who want's to buy it.
Imho it's a good gold sink, and a fun/useful extra. Again imho.

To be honest i don't see a point in minmaxing gold making. I mean... what do you spend all that gold on? If they make having ONE main meaningful, you wont be wasting money on your alts that much. The only think i can think of is buying those fullextra limousine mammoths... still that's not very needed.
Ofcourse i see how that can appeal to someone... as can the Hog appeal to me.

[lyps]

Lol, "no more paying money for materials", because gathering doesn't cost anything.

Making money on the AH to buy mats costs less than gathering them. Gathering = throwing money away.

[Raqubor]

Lol, "no more paying money for materials", because gathering doesn't cost anything.

Making money on the AH to buy mats costs less than gathering them. Gathering = throwing money away.

It depends on your realm and play style. If you are one of those people who sit all day in a main city, than i guess you are right.

[RodneyStanger]

the pure size of posts in this thread is bananas

[lyps]

It depends on your realm and play style. If you are one of those people who sit all day in a main city, than i guess you are right.

Actually no, none of that proves that gathering materials is cost-free. Any method of acquiring materials costs something, regardless of your play style or realm statistics. He is happy because he doesn't have to spend gold on materials when in reality he is just trading the gold cost for a different cost (time to gather).

Gold is merely the default representation of time invested in the game that can be exchanged for other items that also require time to accumulate. He is not avoiding the time investment by avoiding one form of currency (gold). Granted he may be exchanging it for a more personally-enjoyable method of accumulating wealth (at a slower rate of return I might add), but I never disputed the legitimacy of that.

[Annoying]

It depends on your realm and play style. If you are one of those people who sit all day in a main city, than i guess you are right.

This can be right. Keep in mind, this is a game, and no amount of "x is more gold/hr than y!" will persuade 75% of the people into changing. As has been said a few times now, the value of time is subjective. Some people who like to run out and grind mobs may find they have more fun making money skinning than camping the AH scanning for undercuts. It's just how people are.

the pure size of posts in this thread is bananas

B-A-NA-NA-S!
Had to.