World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade Preview

ComputerAndVideoGames.com has conjured up a fairly detailed preview of Blizzard's upcoming World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade expansion pack.
While the current professions give their masters the potential to make pretty much every kind of armour or weapon in the game, the lack of a skill to make jewellery and trinkets is noticeably absent. But no longer, for jewel-crafting is about to make its debut. Players who adopt this profession will not only be able to craft all sorts of bling, but they'll also be able to create refined gems, which have statistics attributed to them.

Another new feature which ties in with jewel-crafting is socketed items. As you'd expect from the name, this basically means items that have spaces for gems to be inserted. Socketed items will cover all kinds of items in the game, not just the high-level ones, and will drop from mobs. The designers are also going back and revisiting skills such as tailoring and leatherwork to allow these professions to create socketed items.