I guess Verant/SOE can kiss my A*SFollow

I started baking with my new toon and I'm having quite some fun with it but.... I just browsed through the WoW website: http://www.blizzard.com/wow/townhall/tradeskills.shtml

and found this:



Well...every time I dared to critizise EQ's TS system -mainly tailoring- I was told (between the lines or openly) I was to dumb to understand how TS in EQ are supposed to work. That I found the system dumb seemed no excuse since I play the game for only 2 months.

So I guess the EQ designers can just kiss my A*S as soon as WoW comes out. And I will wish everyone who finds it cool to waste raw materials and plat just to skill up until finally able to produce some good stuff (that are with few exceptions still less effective than most high-lvl mob drops) lots of patience in doing so. :))



Edited, Wed Jan 28 05:52:49 2004 by Leiany

A tattered mask IS useful. It increases your AC by one. Metal bits ARE useful; you need them to complete other receipes. There's nothing created via the tradeskills that jumps to mind that serves zero purpose, except perhaps unenchanted jewelry.

Now, if WoW can guarentee that introductory level cloth armors and whittled twigs will remain valuable, that I'd like to see. Even in a "everything in the game is crafted" economy, the simple fact is that the intro level stuff is going to be devalued by the sheer quantity of it being made. Unless they have some silly system where you go from sharpening knife blades to fabricating full suits of plate armor in two steps.

I'll be damned. A silly system where you can go from sharpening knife blades to crating plate armor... a world where you can take a strip of fine silk, say "Me make shirt now!" and punch it full of needle holes, but still not ruin the fabric despite your Neatherthal attempts at tailoring. Sounds.. umm.. great. I guess. If you like gimmes.

I'm guessing you still need SOME sort of skill to attempt to fabricate an item. Lord, I hope so.

God forbid someone actually buy and read one of the many, many recipe books located on merchants. Or talk to them to get recipes. Or find receipes in dungeons, like Cazic Thule and exchange them with fellow tradeskillers. C'mon, you don't even lose materials on an invalid combine any longer. The risk of getting a "You can not combine these items in this container type" too much to bear?

God forbid I spell recipe correctly.
You can no longer increase your spelling skill on this word!

Edited, Wed Jan 28 09:53:45 2004 by Jophiel

As a trade skiller, I have to agree that the WoW system sounds pretty damn gimp. The whole value of high end items was that they are hard to make and unless you have the skill, you fail. I don't see how it will help when you can go gather the material for some thing really nice, combine with no previous skill and succeed. Every time. The value of such an item will fall fast because every idiot will be able to make them. The difficulty of high end items gives them thier value. No difficulty, no value.

My biggest nitpick with tradeskills in EQ is not that you can fail. It's the stupid rarity of some items that you need even to progress. If WoW doesn't address that then the rest is pretty meaningless in my opinion.

We'll see what the (EQ) tradeskill patch does, but I believe it will just help the carpal tunnel crowd, in that the combines themselves will be automated a bit.

I imagine the TSing in WoW will be a series of skill up recipes, not unlike TSing in almost every other game. Tho, like DAoC, more difficult recipes will be 'blocked' from being able to be made until you reach a specific skill level. In order to make a steel weapon your skill level would need to be maybe 100, but to make a charmed uber super duper weapons the skill level needed would be like, ummmm, maybe 1000 before the recipe opens up.

I am willing to bet that the "best" player made items will require a drop from a "dangerous" location. If an ingrediant is not easy to get it would compensate a bit for the "no fail" guarentee.

Leiany your sig says It's not the havin - It's the gettin.
That is what tradeskills have always been about in this game.

Can I have your gear instead?

...well there are 11(?) armor slots available on a toons body. with the average failor rate i wonder where I should put those other 2 complete sets of armor I make till 26/56/108. There is no third world in EQ to send them to!

PS: "cloth armor" which is miracoulosly only crafted by mobs (I guess they use all that "woven spider silk" we players are to dumb to tailor with *lol*) had coverd my FP-based Rogue completely at lvl 4 cause every humanoid mob dropped LOTS of 'em....so much for the realistic usefullness of making tattered armor ;-)

Edited, Wed Jan 28 11:26:11 2004 by Leiany

About my sig:

I will always remember how I GOT the dwarven mail shirt: I jumped out of a window in castle crush because 2 Royal guards, the Emmissary and some caster spawned (or returned, I was a bit lazy in running after 1 or 2)while I was looting Crush's body. It was pitch black night - the orcs took the long way of course but the caster kept hitting me, I fell into the water got nearly lost in the dark and beaten half to death by the mobs (made it out of Zone with 14% left.)

About HAVING the shirt finally - sold itself in the Bazaar the very night while I was asleep, I don't even remember for how much....

THAT'S what my sig means :)

That's because they upped the drop rate of cloth armors, buckler shields, boots, etc as part of the "make life easier for the newbies" campaign. Back in the day, my half elf paladin occassionally collected small cloth bits off orc pawns which were useless (medium race, no small race starts in Freeport) except to sell. Tattered leather was useful -- for a ruined cat pelt off a puma and a 1sp pattern, I could save about a gold verus buying a cloth veil from the wood elf broad in W. Freeport. Mind you, newbie money was a lot harder to come by then and the silver you got off fire beetle eyes was quite a score. Regardless, I made a full suit of patchwork for my paladin before level 10 (and felt quite dapper) and didn't come near to trivializing the combine. BTW, you might want to compare the AC on those cloth pants, tunic, sleeves, etc before saying they're just as good as tattered/patchwork.

Regardless, I said it was useful. It is. It serves a function. Whether or not that function is valuable to you depends entirely on you. A full mithril breastplate currently has little value to me since I have a better breastplate. Does that mean it serves no function? To someone wearing an acrylia breastplate at lvl 50, it certainly does. Hell, even to me it serves a function -- I just have something that serves it better.

Probably A. Of course, some of the newbie armors can be practically bought off the rack since all the parts are droppable and commonly found on merchants, but that's neither here nor there.

Which makes more sense?
(A) Learning tailoring by doing some nonsensical recipe involving field rat whiskers, orcish toenails, bat eyes and millipede saliva. Then learning it more by collecting some more goofy bits and bobs, all the while making equipment that you can't use, trade, sell, etc...
(B) Learning tailoring by taking scraps of hides and stitching them into some crude, but somewhat effective clothing and armor repeatedly
(C) Learning tailoring by collecting some thread, silk, gold buttons and silver lining and magically knowing how to sew without fail?

Personally, I think EQ's system, while hardly perfect, sounds a damn sight better (and more realistic) than what you're talking about.

Everyone has something better than a full mithril breastplate? Mudflation is worse than I thought

The system you describe isn't even a tradeskill system, it's a quest system. Just like anyone, regardless of smithing skill, can make a ranger newbie sword given the right bits in EQ, you have a system where anyone can can make a Longblade of Niftiness in WoW regardless of smithing skill. All you have to do is collect the right bits. That's like saying the bard Lambent armor quests in EQ are an example of a fine tradeskill system. You just need to replace the NPC with a forge and the trade button with a combine one.

Anywho, there's not much reason to keep debating it. If WoW's gimme system is what you're looking for in a game, go for it. I'm sure you'll be quite happy.

It depends on what you want to get out of your tradeskilling. My Ranger has fletching up to 184 because, you guessed it, he wants arrows for himself. I'd like to make cultural bows and arrows, but I will need to get my blacksmithing (and pottery too, I think) up also in order to be able to make those items reliably.

And for my Beastlord main, I plan on eventually having my tradeskills all up very high so I can do the Coldain Shawl quest, and perhaps some of the other high-level tradeskill quests. But for now I just have Pottery up above 122 so making the Vial of Velium Vapors is "trivial". I felt that was 30 pp and 90 minutes of clicking well spent.

Game on,

The Oneiromancer

Don't get me wrong - all of you earned your tradeskills hard and honestly inside the system but am I really the only one who would prefer something more exciting then 90 minutes of clicking in front of the vendor - Like foraging special wood for special arrows in a dangerous place *YES!*.

I can assure you I enjoy quests for stuff. Even twinked I did the newbie quest for my enchanter and still wear 2 pieces.

Actually my Rogue gal made both the FP and the complete Kelethin armor quest. But betwen this (lvl 5+), the "final test"(lvl 10) and the Epic (lvl 40?50? - i dont know exactly) is a large gap, wouldn't you agree?