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Professions
Paul: Thanks, Kris. My name is Paul Kubit. I am a game designer in World of Warcraft, and today I am going to talk about professions. So let’s get right into it. So the biggest thing we wanted to do in Legion as far as professions are concerned is to give you more stuff to do.
Whad does that mean? Well, it means — I will bring you a picture. Let’s say it is Sunday afternoon, you log into WoW, you got a couple of hours to kill, but you aren’t really feeling that questline you are working on, you don’t do raids on Sundays, you kinda want to work on your alchemy or your blacksmith thing. Well, we think you should be able to do that, and we don’t want to hold you back from doing that.
So the first way we are going to attack that is with recipe acquisition. So gone are the days when you kinda logon into a new expansion and you find your trainer, and click-click-click-click and OK I know every recipe that you need to know for the new expansion. Some of that is OK, but we also want you to get out in the world and kinda carve your own path. Find some recipe your friends haven’t found yet, meet some cool characters going to adventures.
An example of how that might look like is in the case of tailoring. As a tailor, you will go to Dalaran, and your adventure starts there. You will meet a trainer. She wants to find out what kind of cloth they have in the Broken Isles; and it is cloth this time, it’s not fur. So you go down to the world, you get some cloth, you bring it back and you start to sew with her, and you start to make a rob; but the cloth is rejecting the thread you are putting in, it’s falling apart, it’s making a huge mess.
You need to find someone who knows how to work with this material. So you go out in the world, into one of our new zones: Azuna, and you meet Lindras(?), she is a night fallen, which means she is an exile member of the nightborne elves. Nightborne typically have issues with magical cravings, but anyways, he is very friendly, helps you with your sewing problems and teaches you a bunch of new patterns. He is also very interested in that magical floating city in the sky you came from, and the rest of your questline deals with continuing to learn patterns from Lindras, ideally with the idea to bring him to the city of temptation; and eventually going to Suramar and kinda finding out why he was exiled, and why his people got so good at tailoring.
Now this kind of tailoring acquisition isn’t simply limited to crafters. Gatherers get a lot of that too. As a miner, for example, you will be learning from characters like [tauren-name] here. He is dead. You can tell. He’s also very into mining. From characters like him and others, you learn how to more efficiently mine some of the new materials like leystone, one of our new ores. While on the subject of gathering, I wanted to share a story with you, guys. I was out gathering herbs on my character a couple of weeks back, and I saw an herb that I wanted to pick, so I started running towards it, and then this druid came down and kinda picked it right in front of me, and then flew away. He didn’t even say anything. Has it happened to anybody else, too?
I think it is the same guy. Well, that’s not going to happen anymore in Legion; because mining nodes and herbalism nodes will be shared. So the druid gets the herb, I get the herb, my friend who was gathering herbs gets the herb. Everybody is happy.
So you have gone through the mining or tailoring or whatever recipe acquisition, and you learned all your recipes. You are done, right? Well, you can if you want to, but if you are really interested in continuing to work on your professsions, like I said, we don’t want to hold you back from doing that.
So we have the concept of recipe ranks where there are 2-star, 3-star recipes out in the world, some of which are very rare and prestigious. You can go hunt down an herb, and it will make you more efficient at making the things you already know how to make. Here is an example of how that looks in a UI.
You can see this guy has a 2-star ranking Binding of Mastery there, and 1-star — actually, you know, this UI is starting to look a little cramped and maybe a little outdated. Let’s just blow it out a little bit. Much better. Okay!
So maybe a long-overdue update to the tradeskill UI, but yea, you got a bigger list of recipes on the left. Details of the selected recipe on the right. A couple of things I want to point out to you. There is also a favorite list at the top. So maybe you are that alchemist who says: “I just make flasks, man. That’s all I do.”
Great. You can take those one or two flasks you make every week, and put them to the top. You don’t have to look through 200 potions anymore. I also want to point out that there is a Learned and an Unlearned tab, as well. So now you will be able to see the list of recipes that you don’t know, as well as details on where to find them. You can complete that collection.
(Note: biggest applause of WoW panels)
Going back to those 2-star and 3-star recipes, those aren’t just going to give you more efficiency. You are getting more crafting materials, less time and so on. If you really want to make something more powerful, then you need something called Obliterum.
Now Obliterum is this demonic ash or dust that you can use to increase the power level of your crafted items, and interestingly it comes from crafted items. So I will explain.
Once you have hit level 110, you are going to stumble upon a questline which will culminate in you unveiling this big radical demon hunter-inspired forge in the middle of Dalaran, called the Obliterum Forge; and you can use that to convert crafted items that you no longer want or need into Obliterum.
Maybe you are a jewelcrafter, and you want to make yourself a ring with just the right stats for you, so you make a ring and of course, it has the wrong stats. So make one again and 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 rings until you have got the exact ring you wanted.
Perfect. You put it on, seems to fit alright, now these other six rings — you can vendor them, sure; you can sell them on the Auction House; or now you can take them to the Obliterum Forge, convert them into Obliterum and use that to increase the power level of the ring you are already wearing.
So bringing it all back, it is Sunday afternoon and you got this time to spend. If you haven’t learned all your recipes, well, you can go on an adventure. Go complete your recipe acquisition. If you have already learned all your recipes, well you can go hunt down some of those 2-star/3-star recipes that are hidden out there in the world; or if you just want to make more powerful gear for yourself or your guildies, well you can do that too; and also turn it into Obliterum. Make your gear more powerful. Plenty of stuff to do.
You shouldn’t run out of content. Let’s talk about some of the things you might be making.
Engineering
We want crafted gear to feel special. Not just be a carbon-copy of raid gear. One of the places I think we have done that pretty well in the past is in the case of engineering googles. They don’t feel like normal helms, and in this expansion it’s no different.
This time they are made of guns, and gun parts, it’s actually like the gun here, a scope here, and a trigger here; and the reason why you will find out when you play on that questline as an engineer; but as a result you can shoot bullets at enemies with your head — which already feels very different than any other helm in the game.
Jewelcrafting
Different doesn’t always mean adding a different clicky effect, take for example this necklace here (image above). All high-level necklaces and rings made by jewelcrafters have a guaranteed gem slot in them — which is already different than anywhere else in the game; and it’s also smart of the jewelcrafter, right, because they sell you the gem along with it: “Wouldn’t you like some crit with that?”
But in addition, this particular necklace has a class specific buff on it. It’s just for a warrior. So if you are a warrior, you want to get that buff. One of the best ways to do that is to hunt out a jewelcrafter, or be one yourself.
Inscription
Let’s talk about inscription. Where are my scribes at? Hi, scribes. Okay, in Legion, there is going to be a lot of ways that you can customize the way that your character plays. We have all those talents that Kris talked about. We have PvP talents which he didn’t talk about today, we have the artifact and the artifact traits.
All of these are going to greatly affect the way your character’s rotations work; and with all these customizations in place, glyphs were starting to feel a little redundant. Though, in Legion, we removed Major Glyphs from the game. They no longer exist. I can already hear like murmurs from the scribes going: “NO NO NO, my cash flow! Why are you punishing us?”
Well, we have thought about you guys. Don’t worry. First of all, you still make the powerful Darkmoon Faire cards (the trinkets) that are as desireable as they have always been.
Secondly, we still have minor glyphs. These are more player preferenced cosmetic glyphs, and they are going to work a little bit differently. Instead of being learned, they are going to be applied as a consumable directly to the spell. Kinda you just right-click the item and it opens up the spellbook and you apply it to the spell, and see the effect of the glyph on the spell there.
You are still limited to one glyph per spell, but we have moved the restriction of three total glyphs; so you can glyph as many spells as you want …
(big cheers from audience)
… and in addition, to roundup the scribes, we have got the new consumable called Vantus Rune; and this is the way to calling out a particular boss you want to take it to. It is a week-long buff. You can only use one per week, and lasts the whole week; and for example, this one does more damage to Xavius.
Maybe your guild is having trouble getting past Heroic Xavius. Your guild leader says: “Alright, guys. We are all going to get Vantus Rune: Xavius. We are going to do way more damage to him. We are going to go past this brick wall, and move on to the next brick wall.
Second Professions
I will talk real quick about all the secondary professions that we shared. Archeologists are going to be taking on in the expansion’s next campaign that will be revealed over the next several months. It’s going to take you to all the different corners of Azeroth, where you are going to find a lot of cool stuff to display with a particular focus on things that you can use, equip, use as pets, and so on.
Cooking
Here is Nomi. You may remember him from Pandaria. He’s grown up a little bit. He’s joining your team again as your new chef. You bring him ingredients, and he is going to help you discover some new recipes that you can use with those ingredients. Also, for the first time in World of Warcraft history, you will be able to cook Bacon.
(Crowd: YEAAAAAA!!!!)
Fishing
We want fishing to feel more like an adventure. When you fish, you should be thinking: “Oh, fishing! I want to know what’s going to happen to me today!” — and not: “Oh, fishing! What am I going to watch on my second monitor?”
(Audience laughs)
First Aid
… and finally, first aid, we have lots of exciting new bandage-related content. Two more bandages, slightly higher numbers than before. It’s going to be great. I love first aid. Can’t get enough first aid.
And Much, Much More
There is a whole lot more we have planned, but that’s all the time we have got for professions today. Coming up next, Matt Goss is going to talk about items, itemization, and a little bit more.
| Browse these pages: | Artifacts | Artifact Power | Relics | Upgrading Artifact | Class Halls |
| Class Champions | Demon Hunter | Class Changes | Professions | Itemization |
