But Kevin G (who kindly sent us this tip -- thanks!) brings up another interesting profession topic -- just how are Death Knights going to deal with leveling up their professions? Surely, since Blizzard doesn't want them running around level 1 areas like noobs, they wouldn't actually have to level up from the beginning, would they? As hilarious as the thought of a black armorclad bringer of devastation chasing wolves around Elwynn for their leather is, it's probably a good bet that Blizzard will avoid that scenario.
But how? We have no idea yet. We do know that Blizzard wants to make things easier for people leveling professions all the way up (especially from the higher levels), so maybe there'll be a plan in place that Death Knights can get in on (maybe a quest to do, or a simple charge of a few hundred gold, since that's probably what it would cost to just buy the lower level stuff off the AH). Either way, hopefully we'll see a solution that's both easy on Death Knights and fair to characters who've leveled it up the hard way.
I am a terrible leveler. I started playing back in January 2007, and in all that time have managed to produce a single 70. Admittedly, I think she's a very good 70 and she stays busy, but you would think that nearly 1 1/2 years would be a sufficient period of time to level another class to the endgame. Guess not.
Lately I've been trying to fix this and have gone back to leveling a few alts. While talking to a friend last night about his propensity for leveling alts at the approximate speed of an SR-71, it occurred to me that I have two warriors, only one of whom has leveled quickly. The other just can't seem to fill up the XP bar. Obviously there's no class difference to cite as a possible reason, so I started thinking about what affects the leveling speed of an alt, and why I've got so many unsuccessful ones littering the character selection screen:
From the Noob Comic comes Area Effect. Sometimes, a mage just can't help himself.
Messy Cow has some adventures in Skinning, although she should have been healing. The best part? The "rouge" who was stealing corpses!
Teh Gladiators battle their stealthed opponents, and the Murlocs heat up the scene. This week, the commentary beneath the comic is decidedly worth the read.
NoObz #9 brings you to a special mob-held meeting of sorts, where you get to meet the gray kangaroo (wolf).
The old computer has finally broken him. A friend of Monkey Punchers is finally Losing It.
In LFG this week, my favorite character breaks into a song and dance!
Shakes and Fidget have made their Preparations, and with proper hilarity ensuing.
This week on Dark Legacy Comics, the NPCs launch plans to take over the world, through Operation: Horace.
From Action Trip comes Impressive Knowledge. Seriously, kids these days really know their stuff! Sure, they might lose a finger or a hand, but then they'll know which faction they're dealing with, right?
Pass through the break to vote for your favorite from this week's selection.
Last week David covered pet control, in case you missed it. This week I'll be talking about a question people ask on the forums quite often: "What profession is good for a hunter?" Each profession, of course, has its pros and cons. Most professions, in fact, have a variety of professionals involved at all levels, and in many cases you couldn't get two of them to agree on their career of choice for love or money. A cursory look at the professions forum will confirm it most days. But over the years, and with several hunter characters, I've picked up a few ideas from my own experience and from that handed out in the forums. Herein, I'll share what I know, and perhaps what some others have taught me as well!
The "Basic Income" Not all players take pleasure in crafting. It can be tedious, time consuming, and the gear you produce can be replaced with drops in many cases at the same level. Hours can be spent running back and forth from auction house, to bank, to forge, to auction house, to forge, to bank, to Wowhead, back to auction house, and so on. If that doesn't appeal to you, the "Basic Income" might be perfect.
The problem many crafters run into is an age-old problem of "independent merchants and distributors" everywhere. In many cases, the stuff you can sell for the most profit is also the stuff you need to consume to make things. In many cases, professionals in WoW have to decide between leveling their profession and being able to afford pet food. One way to avoid that conundrum is to take two gathering professions. That way everything you gather, you can sell without consuming it, and you won't be worried about using up your ore to make armor or using up your herbs to make potions. You won't be able to make either!
Continuing our craftingparade for patch 2.4 is Leatherworking. Leatherworkers get a total of four sets, covering a myriad of class/spec combinations. There is a physical DPS set for both Leather and Mail, as well as a healing set for both of those.
The -of the Sun and the Sun-Drenched sets cover healing. The -of the Pheonix set covers the Mail DPS, while the Gloves of Immortal Dark and Carapace of Sun and Shadow handle Leather DPS. A couple of those are quite a mouthful!
As with the other tradeskills, the gloves of these sets require Sunmotes and the breastplates require Primal Nethers, so be ready to put some effort into acquiring these pieces. A lot of Wind Scales and Heavy Knothide Leather goes into these as well, so you may want to get a head start on those. Most of these pieces are very heavy with red sockets accompanied by relatively useful socket bonuses, which is ideal for most of the classes these are aimed for, though not all. For the classes that love their reds, this is a pretty sweet deal. For everyone else? It's not like you need those bonuses, this gear is impressive without them.
If you have any interest in these sets, hop on across the jump! Once again, my thanks goes out to Boubouille of MMO Champion for these images.
Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling and using player-made products.
In the spirit of Amanda's genteel post on tipping etiquette (and how social networking gives you a distinct edge), Insider Trader brings you further discussion of two of the finer points of WoW trading etiquette: node/farming etiquette and transmute etiquette. Unless you're interested in building a rep as "Internet N00b Behaving Badly," you'll want to be sure you're aware of how your actions are most likely interpreted by players around you, both in the field and back in town.
It's worth noting right off the bat that attitudes about farming etiquette vary from PvE to PvP servers, and even from server to server on the same server types. You may find yourself on a rather combative server, where crotchety players will slay players of the opposite faction before allowing them to reach a node first. On other servers (even some PvP servers), Horde and Alliance respectfully yield to whoever clears the area or arrives first at harvesting points. You'll definitely want to keep your eyes open and see what other players on your server are expecting. Try reading the server forums, too, to see if ninja-farming is a frequent bone of contention.
We've covered many different aspects the world of Roguecraft has to offer thus far -- from class quests to gear to number crunching. However, one of the things I've heard from people who are new to Rogues is the question of what trade skills are useful to take up and why. As such, this week's edition of Encrypted Text will contain some of my views on what each trade skill can offer a Rogue. Obviously, short of starting a wiki -- this is not going to be a fully comprehensive version of all that Trade skills can offer. But hopefully between my experience of bouncing between many, many trade skills, and comments from the seasoned Rogues in the WoW Insider crowd, we'll be able to de-mystify one of the earliest choices facing the new Rogue.
Insider Trader is your weekly inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.
Nothing interrupts a peaceful night of crafting like a lunatic guildmate ranting about learning a coveted new pattern, only to find that it's already green in skill level – nothing, that is, except that sickening feeling in your stomach as you consider what you'll do when your favorite patterns go green. Skilling up a profession can be a rollercoaster ride, if you don't hit the right patterns at the right time. (Of course, all the professions have those infamous "dead zones," when skilling up seems to be based on either unfathomable luck or unfathomable finances – or maybe both. But we'll cover dead zones in another installment.)
Skilling up in a profession can happen when you create an item that's listed in green, yellow or orange in your tradeskill window. Items listed in grey will not give you any skill points for creating them; red listings anywhere means you don't have the required skill level. Just as it does with creatures you fight, pattern color indicates difficulty and skill-up potential. Green items raise your skill occasionally, yellows about half the time and oranges every single time. (The exception to orange skill-ups occurs in skinning, in which successfully skinning an orange creature does not guarantee a skill-up.) As a burgeoning crafter, your goal is to find patterns that are relatively easy to get the materials to make while providing a solid shot at skilling up. While orange patterns offer a guaranteed chance of gaining a skill point, the best bang for the buck is often a yellow pattern.
When I used to play Dark Age of Camelot, the crafting setup was my least favorite part of the game-- it seemed like crafting materials were expensive, the crafting process took way too much time (I having long conversations with others standing around the crafting area), and the stuff you made (at the early levels anyway) just wasn't that great. So WoW's system may not be perfect, but it seemed like a breath of fresh air after that-- materials come from actually playing the game, and putting things together is something you can generally do as an afterthought rather than as, well, a profession. The gathering is the important part.
So Mystic Worlds says, why not make the gathering the whole thing? You still go out and get mats from the world, crafters turn those raw mats into usable mats, and then you'd actually take the bolts and gems and tanned leather that crafters made to NPC crafters, who would turn them into items. That way, if you want a Robe of the Void but you aren't a tailor, you just take the mats to an NPC tailor who can hammer one out for you.
Nikol of WoW Ladies posts about something I shouldn't get so worked up about, but often do anyway-- higher level characters farming mobs that lower levels need for quests or rep.
Now, Nikol is actually on the opposite side of the equation from the one I remember being on more. She was wondering if there is a certain etiquette when she goes to farm Timbermaw rep (as a level 68) and starts competing for mobs with level 58s. Which is actually very nice of her, because usually I'm in the other situation: I'm playing a lowbie alt and I have to go kill 50 pigs to get their spleens. Suddenly, a level 70 mage roars through the area, AoEing every pig he sees, rounding them all up in a pile so he can level up his skinning. A few seconds later, I'm left with nothing to farm, and he's standing over a pile of piggies, skinning away and humming to himself. For some reason, that makes me just see red. There are lots of other places he can farm skinning, so why does he feel the need to gank my quest mobs? It makes me seethe just thinking about it!
Unfortunately, as Nikol finds out, there is no set etiquette-- outside of a group, it literally is a free-for-all. If you're in my place, your only real option is to just find another quest to work on while all the mobs respawn, or poke around to see if he missed any. And to tell the truth, I shouldn't get so angry anyway-- it could be that the mage didn't realize I needed those pigs, and in fact, there is probably a whole other cache of pigs just over the hill that I haven't found yet.
But for some reason it just drives me nuts. Have you been on either side of this situation? And how have you handled it?
Just in case you were hoping that due to Inscription or any other of the huge profession changes coming in Wrath of the Lich King, you'd get another expansion slot, Bornakk confirms that you will not -- despite all the changes to professions, the way that characters choose them will not change.
Last week David covered 
Nothing interrupts a peaceful night of crafting like a lunatic guildmate ranting about learning a coveted new pattern, only to find that it's already green in skill level – nothing, that is, except that sickening feeling in your stomach as you consider what you'll do when your favorite patterns go green. Skilling up a profession can be a rollercoaster ride, if you don't hit the right patterns at the right time. (Of course, all the professions have those infamous "dead zones," when skilling up seems to be based on either unfathomable luck or unfathomable finances – or maybe both. But we'll cover dead zones in another installment.)
Here's 
Nikol of WoW Ladies posts about something I shouldn't get so worked up about, but often do anyway-- 
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