Tobold's Blog
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
 
The joys of crafting

I can't really explain why, but crafting has always been one of the most fun things for me to do in most MMORPGs. So now my multi-boxing couple of characters has reached level 50, I've spent a big amount of gold and time to level up my druids enchanting from 300 to 375, and I'll do the same with his engineering next.

Well, at least the enchanting I can justify with the easier access to enchants for my other characters, now that you can cast enchantments on scrolls and send them to your alts. But engineering isn't really all that useful. I mostly took that one because I never had a character with maxed out engineering. Once I reach that, the only other craft I never had at 450 is leatherworking, and that one I'm currently leveling up on the rogue, the other character of the multiboxing pair.

Now crafting in World of Warcraft isn't exactly challenging. The only difficulty lies in getting the materials, and often you can just buy those. But I'm having fun optimizing that, especially in interaction of several characters. So instead of buying expensive enchanting dust on the auction house, I check which of my other crafters can make items that would disenchant into that dust the cheapest. That usually turns out to be the tailor. But what works changes with patches and the market, some players got rich by a combination of prospecting, jewelcrafting, and enchanting. And then of course many players sell green items for less than the value of the dusts they disenchant to, so buying stuff to disenchant is also a possible future source of income.

Funnily enough I enjoy "playing the markets" only when there is a crafting step involved. Buying underpriced things and simply reselling them for more isn't as much fun as profitable transformations. Not that I would need the gold for anything, I still have over 70k of it, it is really the *playing* aspect of playing the markets I enjoy.

I'd love if crafting was a bit more involved than just clicking one button in World of Warcraft, but even as it is I'm having quite a lot of fun with it.
Comments:
Did you get a chance to play Star Wars Galaxies before the NGE? I haven’t tried ATitD, but of the MMORPGs I have played, Star Wars Galaxies had far and away the best crafting and general economy. Your materials had different qualities, so the same item could be built with better stats if you used better quality materials and components. There was also no auction house (well… there technically was one, but nobody used it), and lots of dependencies on other crafting professions which led to people shopping around, optimizing their time and energy, and often making contact with possible suppliers in various areas.

It was a good time, very involving and very fun even without decent combat to back it up. SWG's economy is pretty much the reason why I believe in the possibility of a glorious sandbox MMORPG.
 
Dawntide will basically be about crafting. But it is still very far from finished.
 
Did you get a chance to play Star Wars Galaxies before the NGE?

Yes, I did. And I agree that the resource gathering part of SWG was the most fun one I ever played in a MMORPG. I especially liked the exploration aspect of trying to find the best minerals, whose location changed every week. Not so sure about the crafting part, I remember crafting 1,600 Mabari chestplates to level up armorcrafting.

I did like the system of having a house with a droid vendors, so you could create a real shop, with regular customers.
 
Yeah, the overall economy was the more interesting part, crafting was a grind when leveling up. I was only focusing on the crafting part to stay on topic, but yeah locating minerals was great.

I remember one time I was searching around a seemingly deserted section of a very poorly populated planet and I found an extremely high quality rare ore that I could use. The problem was that it was nearly depleted so I left thinking I’d missed out. Then I stumbled upon a nearby lone house filled with crates of that same exact ore (the fucker stole my ore!), and the owner sold me all of it. I ended up getting a ton of dependable business with my crafted goods because of that extra quality.
 
I like in ffxi that all the crafts are available and there's tonnes of recipes but self-farming materials is horrible.
 
Try using your jewelcrafter to make rings and disenchant those. I think you'll find that works best.
 
Yeah the SWG system is something I really wish I had of tried. From the sounds of it, the economy was perhaps the coolest ever.

Particularly, I love the sound of having crafters be famous across servers for the their goods; this is the sort of thing I think an MMO should be, a 'real' community.

Interestingly, both EvE and SWG have highly regarded economies, yet they are different in so many ways.

I wonder if a combination of the two might be as close to perfect (for an MMO) as it gets?
 
Dude. I just got to 450 engineering on a character. It is the most fun I ever had(in WoW), way better than when I had 375 engineering on my warrior back in BC. Plus, they are saying engineers can make bows in Cataclysm. Between the nitro boots enchant, the robot that gives bank access and repairs, the fact you can use your faction's auction house from Dalaran, and best of all the x-ray goggles so I can see all the women in their little panties, plus all the extra eternals you get from having a mote extractor... I know you already know this. I'm just saying, you are in for a really special treat! God DAMN I love engineering!
 
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