WICBT: Should professions be account-wide?

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This weeks Community Blog Topic hits on an issue that is actually something that I and I am sure many of you have not only thought about recently but through out you playing time in Azeroth. The easy route would be to take a page from the Diablo 3 book and have it be to have all characters have access to all professions and each one of your characters can contribute to leveling said professions at the same time, however I disagree on this route, follow be after the jump to find out my thoughts.




Robin Torres at WoW Insider gives the example of a crafting bench where you could access all your alts professions, but is concerned with the lore aspect of having a lets say Master Blacksmith suddenly being able to craft Cloth Bags. My idea is similar to hers in which you would still need to level professions on alts and you would be able to access them from what ever character you are playing. The difference is instead of a work bench you would go to the town's establishment for what ever profession you wanted to access and there would be an NPC there that took your order and would craft the item for you as long as a character you have meets the requirement for the item and the craft time would be a little longer then if you were crafting it. This is similar to the Diablo 3 method but not exactly, because each character would also have there own professions they specialize in and only characters that personally had the profession could use the stat bonuses and Profession only items.

I don't want to see each character get all professions because I think then we would lose the specials each profession has like stamina from mining, ring enchants and such. Also giving each individual character access to every profession will also degrade the community aspect of the game further because people wont rely on guild or server mates for items, it would also effect the AH somewhat but not completely because you will always have the people who find professions too much work.

My other solution is allow each character to have two crafting professions and one gathering profession,  this would only really help people who choose a combination of Blacksmith/Jeweler/Engineer or Alchemist/Scribe, however it would be a great help because you already have character with Tailoring/Enchanting which essentially is 2 Crafting and 1.5 gathering (.5 because anyone can find cloth but Tailors find it quicker). The only profession left out in the cold on this change would be leather workers which is where my big change would come add a Furniture Maker to the game for Player Housing (we can dream right?). The Furniture Maker would use a combination of leather and wood, wood would be gathered though Skinning. We already have humanoid plants want make them skinnable, you could also put nodes on trees in the world that could be skinned.

• I guess it would be possible to have 1 Crafting/2 Gathering, or 3 Gathering, or 3 Crafting. However I really think it should be limited to 2/1, I know there are some pure gatherers out there and if Blizzard implemented this new system I would say let them keep the 2 gathering (only grandfathered in, meaning no new 2 gatherers), until the wanted to learn a crafting profession when then it would tell them in order to become a Crafter they must drop a gathering profession.

I really don't like the each characters get all professions it cheapens it to the point of saying why even have professions. Although the communal Diablo-ish why would be nice I would want it to be based of alts. I really like the option of 2 crafting/1 gathering, it would allow somepeople to try something new.