feed"Archaeology will be less important". No way to misinterpret this -- it's a nerf. To a profession we haven't even seen yet. To be fair, Archaeology as described at Blizzcon was on it's way to becoming a mandatory profession. Anything that gives your character additional power and/or utility is very likely to be mandatory in the current min/max environment. Blizzard clearly feels that "true" secondary professions are not mandatory. I think we can all agree that no one needs to level fishing, cooking or first aid in order to perform at their best. Well, as long as they're willing to purchase consumables on the Auction House.
On the other hand, it looked like leveling Archaeology would be necessary in order to enjoy the benefits it provided. I didn't hear anything that led me to believe you could purchase items from other players that would unlock your Path for you. So clearly it was planned to be a self-use profession with no benefit available to those who skipped it. Which naturally means those who leveled it could be more powerful/useful than those who didn't. Either that or Blizzard would have to make sure that nothing you unlocked would actually make you more powerful or useful. Either way, a quandary. Another thing to consider - if Archaeology remained in it's original form we probably would have had to level it on every alt. As excited as we might be about Archaeology, I'm not sure any of us would vote for a new profession that we need to level on every toon.
The main problem I see now is that we have a hole in Archaeology where Path of the Titans used to be. Very little information was given about the "new" Archaeology, but it sounds like it will be more focused on lore and novelty items. What I'm wondering is... what's compelling about Archaeology now that Path of the Titans is gone? Most players are not into game lore, so why would someone pursue Archaeology? I'm just not seeing the selling point for this new variant.
While not mandatory, the other secondary professions do provide some utility. Cooking give you buff foods, Fishing provides you with ingredients for Cooking, and First Aid enables anyone to self-heal during solo play. Each of them has a practical purpose that may not make you more powerful, but they provide a convenience or benefit of some sort. I haven't heard anything about the new Archaeology that provides utility, so far it sounds like all fluff and no substance. Again, with no tangible benefit or other strong selling points, I'm not sure why the average player would bother with it.
Normally I don't argue for answers from Blizzard because it's hard to balance player expectations against development constraints when a project is still in development. But in this case I think it would help take the sting out of the loss of Path of the Titans if we knew more about what Archaeology will gain in it's place. Unfortunately none of the information that was shared about Archaeology really touched on that and it's possible that they're still working that out. However, if they're going to take the time and resources to add a new profession to the game, they should probably make sure the community understands what the purpose of the profession is. I think it will help ease fears if we could find out how Archaeology is still meaningful without Path of the Titans. In this case I really think they should share more about Archaeology than they have, we just don't know enough about this new incarnation of it.
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