Community Blog Topic Results: Account-wide professions

... 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.

... account-wide access, with each character still being limited by two primary choices. I'd also argue that herbalism, mining, and skinning ought to be downgraded to secondary professions, freeing up a slot for some characters to get another production/enhancement profession into play. If that means Master of Anatomy, Lifeblood and Toughness get nerfed or removed, then I think that's ultimately an acceptable trade.

Recycling ((dis)Enchantment + Blacksmithing, Tailoring, Engineering, Alchemy, Leatherworking). Used to disassemble and recycle looted gear into different parts. An armor item could be disassembled into both metal, elementals, cloth, leather or fur. Just look at all those padded armors out there, rotting away! It's time Azeroth goes green and recycles! The amount of materials repurposed is based on the armor items class – metal will give more metal etc etc.

I'm open to having old professions archived, so that items are not unlearnt, but are archived. This is the only way I'd ever consider switching out of the professions that I hold, due to the number of tricky to obtain patterns that I have on them. Even make them account-wide, so that they only need to be learnt once. Profession switches could be limited to one per week to reduce exploitation. Just don't give individual characters access to more than the current number of professions. More than that would impact trade, require levelling of all professions and reduce the number of interesting decisions that are important when it comes to playing a game.

I suppose I would be more in favor of a work bench idea as proposed. It would be nice to create an enchant right then and there instead of logging onto your enchanter just to mail it and log back onto the character that needs the enchant. The manager in me feels that process is very inefficient. A workbench could also be implemented with player housing. Player housing could house an account-bound bank that functions like a guild bank, and a workbench in which one character could make use of any of the professions learned within the account.

But besides the positive effects this would have for an individual as described above, what are the down sides? Can it really be all good without bad? How about in-game economy? Well, trading and auction houses would be first to take a blow. If you can make everything by yourself, in most cases you will. This would lead to stagnation in trading that is clearly visible on less populated realms.

You have to make a choice about which professions you take, and after you did, you have to rely on others to sell you the mats you need (or use an alt). While sometimes, that isnt fun (like prizes for certain things sky-rocketing due to a new patch or whatever), it is a system that still works, and there are people who love the trading-game.... I do, and I definitely don't think WOW needs account-wide professions.

Also profession bonuses would have to go away or limited in some way. Otherwise all raiders would be forced by their guilds to level all professions.

Sure the system would need some working out and the professions system probably needs some updates as a whole, something to liven it up and make the experience more enjoyable, rather than thinking the whole time "gosh I really just want this to be over and done with so that I never have to deal with it again." But whether or not account-wide come or not, I want to see some changes to professions as a whole.

The argument against account-wide professions which most immediately comes to my mind is the issue of bag space. Most players are already straining to keep their inventory cleared. What would happen if my Herbalist/Alchemist could suddenly perform the tasks of all the other professions I have fully leveled? During the next expansion, is my main character going to be simultaneously Mining, Herbing, and Skinning? Even one gathering profession is a burden on my bags. Maybe WoW should get rid of bags altogether -- everything I gather, every item and award I pick up along the way can just get sucked into some giant Void Storage which becomes accessible to every character I have.

I imagine that some people are rubbing their hands together gleefully at this point, thinking "Yesssss! Yessssss! Thisss isss what I want! What I needs!"

I'd leave the primary professions as they are but I'd like to see the secondary's to be shared to some extent to not only make them more accessible to those of us that bother leveling them but also more appealing to those that ignore them.