Crafting: Shake your lack of moneymaker
I've been noticing a disturbing trend on the Professions Forum lately. Basically, whenever anyone asks what professions they should take, or whether crafting jobs like jewelcrafting and enchanting are worth it to level, posters advise them to pick up mining and herbalism or mining and skinning instead. The consensus seems to be that professions are only worth it for the BOP items, or for the few people on a server who get a rare enchanting/JC/other pattern. Everything else (except the easy-to-level alchemy) is a "money sink."
This saddens me. I enjoy crafting a lot, and the fact that my prot pally would be essentially throwing money down a black hole by doing jewelcrafting or enchanting or blacksmithing makes me feel that something is fundamentally wrong. Crafting just for the tailoring or blacksmithing BOPs, good as they may be, feels like getting a job just so you can steal office supplies and have health insurance.
The professions forum has a pretty interesting thread going about crafting, opportunity costs, and why raw mats sell for more than the finished product. It seems that most people want to keep professions from being money sinks, but the laws of supply and demand are weighing heavily on crafters (i.e. if everyone can do an enchant, that enchant will be cheap.) Do you have any ideas on how to make crafting more profitable? Or are the BOP items/enchants enough for you?
