Blizzard is going all in on World of Warcraft Dragonflight’s crafting system, introducing an extensive system of tweaks and upgrades and letting crafters specialize to the point where they can potentially even develop their own loyal pool of customers in the MMO game. Crafting orders are at the core of this new system. Players who want to purchase something can issue a crafting order specifying everything from the item type to the reagents used through an interface Blizzard describes as intuitive and like an auction house menu. The crafter then peruses the list of available commissions, picks one that suits their skills, provides the missing reagents if needed, and fills the order.
The service isn’t free, though. The customer and crafter both pay a fee to the new Artisans’ Consortium, because Blizzard decided Dragonflight needs a bunch of middlemen.
Fee grumbling aside, the goal is letting crafters build a customer base partly through good crafting service, but also by delving into some of the new professional specializations also debuting in Dragonflight. These are the subject of a future update, though, so Blizzard didn’t share much about them now, other than saying they exist.
Of potentially greater significance is the quality system. Items in Dragonflight will have a quality rating from tier one to tier five, with various effects added depending on the quality.
Equipment at tier five will have slightly better stats than the same piece’s tier one equivalent, for example, while consumables of higher quality could have more uses than usual. The effect will never be so drastic that players who shell out for tier five items have an obvious advantage, but it’s enough – Blizzard hopes – to create several markets for high and low-quality items.
That’s just the tip of the crafting iceberg, as it were. There’s a new set of crafting stats, including speed and resourcefulness, and an extensive overview of how Blizzard hopes players use the quality system. You can check it out on Blizzard’s blog.
It’s just the latest in Blizzard’s information drip leading up to Dragonflight’s launch. The most recent revelation was an extensive set of changes to the Priest class, and if dataminers are right, there may be several other surprises in store, including a Murloc mount and more.