Trade Skills are now "Professions"

[JustAGuy]

I can't say that I agree with you, Lissa. The idea is good, but in practice, not necessary.

These are clearly major trade skills: Blacksmithing, Engineering, Alchemy, Enchanting, Tailoring, Leatherworking.

These are clearly gathering skills: Herbalism, Mining, Skinning.

The rest: First Aid, Cooking, Fishing

I believe that fishing can't be considered a primary gathering skill. Fishing is pretty much used for recreation, since you can't fish anything for use with trade skills other the Blackmouth and Firefin. Everything else is just for kicks (and, early on, to eat). Since what you fish isn't all that useful (you can't become a major tradeskiller using Fishing as your primary gather skill), it can't be considered a gather skill at all.

In Blizzard's system, this separation of gather vs trade skill is transparent. It is a de facto separation, intended but not declared. Having a seperate section for gathering skills takes away the illusion of choice, when really the player has no choice at all, save for his/her primary trade skill.

If you're going to be a blacksmith, you're going to also be a miner. Simple as that. If you're going to be an alchemist, you're also going to be an herbalist. The delineation is there; Blizzard is simply stopping players from becoming artisans at everything, like super-Mongo over there, because super-Mongo's play isn't what Blizzard intended. Whether Blizzard makes another special class of tradeskills, i.e. gather skills, or not doesn't matter; people, under the new system, will be very limited in what they can become, tradeskill wise, and that's how they (Blizzard) like it.

Two tradeskills and all the secondary skills; that really limits what can be done by a soloist. Tailoring/skinning, Alchemy/herbalist, Enchanting/Herbalist, Leatherworking/Skinning, Blacksmith/Mining, Engineering/Mining. That's about it. They may as well make mining, herbalism and skinning part of the primary trade skills, i.e. make "mining level 1" a skill that you buy from a blacksmith trainer, along with all the smelting and what not. That would put trade types like Tailors on par with the mineral/herb dependent classes like Engineers and Alchemists.

The only thing I'm not happy with is the mounts; now my dream of ever getting a wolf mount for my Paladin has been all but squashed. I was holding out hope of finding a friendly orc somewhere that was willing to train me in the ways of the wolf... :)