Quote Originally Posted by Edax View Post
It was a convoluted mess and there was no MSQ in WoW to bring up your level quickly. If you wanted high level ores, you'd need to grind a combat class for weeks.
Post Cataclysm, each zone had a "MSQ" that could level you up quickly. In addition, Heirlooms became a thing for OP gear that also gave bonus EXP.

To the point where you'd outlevel a zone (So far as for quests to become grey) before you even got halfway through the Zones MSQ.

It did not take weeks to level up to high level outside of Classic and TBC (After that the compounding EXP requirement reductions for previous expansion content started to really make a difference)

That or deal with the upside down economy where the mats were invariably more expensive than the crafted products.
At which point, it becomes better to not take crafting professions and instead take gathering professions to get the mats and sell them for gold to buy the crafted items (Of which, only a handful were actually worth having given WoW's terrible history with crafted items)

Outside the one expansion where there was statistical benefits to having actual crafting professions (However, this was I believe Cataclysm, where as mentioned, leveling was easy and fast so as to be able to level up a material gatherer alt)