Professions

Professions have traditionally been more of an afterthought. Since WoW relies to a large extent on the good stuff being only available in raids, this basically placed professions on a backseat. However, professions could add much more to the game than they currently do:

• Instead of grinding skill points, professions should be leveled differently - not necessarily easier or faster, but certainly not in such a tedious manner as is the case at the moment. 
• Thoughts for crafting professions:
• Carver profession (often asked for, never implemented) for items made of bone or wood like bows, wands, staves, wooden handles, crossbow parts and a load of possible vanity items. The introduction of the carver would necessitate the introduction of woodcutting and/or salvaging.
• Stonecutter profession for alternative weapons (obsidian, flint etc.), statues, talismans, tokens and loads of possible vanity items. Would use mining. 
• Inscription could possibly be useful for crafting new items like trading cards (check the blogpost covering that topic) or for mixing armor dye.
• Rethink gathering mechanics: 
• Introduce woodcutting as an additional gathering skill.
• Crafting profession skills should be merged with the appropriate gathering professions: mining, quarrying (mining), skinning, salvaging (skinning), plucking (herbalism), felling (woodcutting).
• The skinning mechanic is renamed "salvaging" and now includes acquiring bones and horns as well (necessary if the carver profession gets introduced). 
• Redesign crafting mechanics:
• All professions should be roughly equally useful: all professions should add temporary powerups on par with alchemy, permanent powerups on par with jewelry and enchanting, items like blacksmithing/leatherworking/tailoring and gadgets like engineering (or engineering should be looked over instead).
• Players should have more influence on what they're crafting - for example by being able to customize their items instead of crafting loot that's either pre-defined (before WoD) or completely randomized (since WoD).
• "Normal" craftables should be useful as well - the mechanic introduced in WoD (being able to equip up to three crafted items with an ilvl of up to 715) actually made crafting more useful than it has been since BC.  
•  Instead of the best items being random boss drops, bosses should also (or even mostly) drop important crafting materials for certain items, which replace the old boss drops.
• More crossover use for different professions.
• Make professions more interdependent: jewels, handles made of wood, fine leather or cloth are needed for blacksmithing; silk, casings and polished bone for jewelcrafting etc. - and this should be the norm for most items, as long as one doesn't depend on acquiring extensive amounts of those materials for leveling up.
• Introduce "dual profession"-items that require two crafting skills (like, say, an elaborate crossbow that would need both carving and engineering, or a poisoned dagger that needs blacksmithing and alchemy, or a gemmed sword that requires jewelcrafting on top).
• Professions have the potential to be a vital part of other mechanics, like estate mechanics, vehicle mechanics, follower mechanics housing/fortress mechanic or visual customization.