Thoughts on WotLK Professions and instancing
From a multiboxer perspective, I really like the changes to professions - the items not being BoP and such. The advantages to each profession seems to add up to about the same in the end so I guess thats fine except that making money crafting is going to be a bit harder now I guess.
Enchanting mats are pretty expensive at the moment, probably because so many are levelling it. Except for shards (dream shards - yes, the big ones). At first they went for like 30-40g each, now theyre down to below 10g on my server and I was wondering why until I did some searching. It seems that dream shards are a component for relatively few enchants. They are now currency for some enchants, but that's a one-time thing (as opposed to enchanting mats that are reapplied on new gear). I find it ironic that an average green items disenchant value is actually higher than a blue item and it makes my favourite hobby (dungeon crawling) a lot less profitable. The good news it that abyss crystals (DE from epics) are a part of almost all good enchants, and you're going to need lots and lots of them, which means that heroic dungeon crawling will be _very_ profitable.
With a tailor/leatherworker/blacksmith I can make the epic items for all my chars (I love having my shammies in the same gear), but since this is true for everyone with a craft and since recipies are not rare anymore, there'll be no profit in making them. There was never really much of a profit to get from making items anyway, unless you were one of the lucky few with a rare recipe, so that's not much of a loss.
I don't like that there are no instances with mining nodes (other than utgarde which has a few cobold nodes) and herbs seem to be rare as well, which makes the profession a lot less attractive for me (I'm pretty much always in either instances or raids when I play.
Drop rates on blue BoE items in dungeons seem to have increased also, I have had a few runs where I actually had more blue BoE's than green BoE's and the irony of course is that the greens disenchant for more valuable comps than the blues do.
This would spell out a bit of gloom for multiboxers I suppose, but since most of our money is likely to come from dailies anyway, I see the profession changes as mostly positive. It does make instancing a bit less attractive, but then again, the option to make gold was never really part of the instancing fun for me. It was pretty much just 1) gearing up (badges) and 2) doing content I was previously unable to do.
I see a lot of challenges for multiboxers on WotLK - the most dire one being vehicle mechanics (follow etc.) and phasing. I haven't had any problems with phasing so far, but I still can't figure out how I'm going to beat the herald in old kingdom on heroic mode, and how to beat the dragon-vehicle encounter etc.
Many have expressed concern that raid content may be too "easy" which I see as a great thing cause it will make MB-raiding more viable (hopefully).
