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The person who told me about it said that you had to pick gnome or goblin engineering to level it to 300-
This is incorrect. You can take your engineering skill all the way to 300 without ever choosing goblin or gnomish engineering. I can’t think of a reason to do so, but you could if you wanted to. My second character to take up engineering, my hunter, took his skill to 270 before I decided which branch I wanted him to follow.
Think of engineering as a long one way highway. You could travel from the beginning to the end without stopping. But nearing the end of the highway you’ll find two rest stops, one on each side of the road. You can choose to stop at either one of them, but not both. Each of these rest stops has a gift shop where you can buy schematics that are unique to that rest stop. There’s no rule that says you have to stop and buy them. But doing so will give you a greater number of items to make and skill up on. To the best of my knowledge everyone has chosen to stop. The only question is which rest stop to stop at.