Trade Skills are now "Professions"

[LavCat]

And it also seems to make Blizzard's new rule kind of pointless.

Exactly.

Up till now I have led a simple, sheltered life -- aiding damsels in distress and offing magistrates. Always enough gold for what I need and most of what I want (thanks to Blizzard for the free horse). Before the announcement of this new atrocity I had never sullied myself in the auction house!

Now with the enforced separation of related skills it seems the best plan for a beginning hero is to make one's way to Loch Modan and befriend a hapless miner. Team up with, say, a Night Elf druid whose guild has been dissolved, then find a black mask somewhere and start making silver bullets. Someone should tell Blizzard the plot was done in the last century.