Let there be gear

In a recent interview, it was stated that the goal for black smithing, tailoring, and other gear crafting professions is that every item will have a use for somebody. In addition to that, all crafted gear will not be inferior to all gear that drops from dungeons and assorted bosses. This is quite different than in WoW where 90% of everything you craft is just fodder for skill ups then garbage. It's also different because once you have a piece of gear crafted, it's almost guaranteed to be replaced after your first useful drop in a proper dungeon run.

The idea is that the stats and look will be different, as in better for somethings and not so much for others. However they haven't said much in the way of what you'll be able to craft besides gear if anything else (only the Crests for tailoring have been announced). Think tank gear from wow where for certain encounters you'll want a specific stat or different effects from trinkets. Personally, I carried around two full bags of assorted gear so I don't limit my potential.

And now to turn this one tidbit of info into a potential cash cow.

Assuming that there will be a use for most crafted gear, this opens up a ton of niche markets. Now I'm no dreamer and I don't expect -everything- to be worthwhile to a number of people, I do expect there to be a use for a good amount of crafted gear. This means that you can cater to specific level ranges as your sole means of income. Buy the materials, hit craft all, and post them on the AH. Business as usual.

But there's one other thing that may effect this in a large way as far as profit and markets go. The side kick system. In a nutshell, a "side kick" is another player that is a much higher OR lower level than you. It's used to experience the whole game on any toon regardless of level.

Granted if you get boosted you're not going to be nearly as good as a max level toon, but you won't be a waste of space either. It also means that if you love your main you can go back and enjoy all of the starter areas on them as well. With low level crafted gear, you can sell this to people that level themselves down to check out the opening areas of all the other races in the game. That's another large market. Then there's the obvious max level stuff and other assorted leveling gear.

Naturally I'm not expecting there to be a large market for this at the beginning. People will be spending more time doing dungeons and experiencing the whole game which will get them decent gear. Also since there won't be much gold in the economy, most people will be farming the materials to have somebody craft something if they can't do it themselves. It won't be until later on when people have more spare change or start making alts that crafted gear will become thoroughly profitable. Sure you can make a bit of extra change here and there, but no serious returns on the investment just yet.

Looking forward to seeing just how "useful" the crafted items are going to be and in what ways they'll be different. If it's nothing more than a different look, it's going to be completely 100% worthless outside of very rare recipes. We shall see.


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