Trade Skills are intended to be used for a number of purposes. The most common of these purposes will be our forthcoming Profession system, which will be using Trade Skills to perpetuate their success.
Professions are a number of jobs or occupations a character, any character, can participate in and have an equal opportunity to succeed in that profession than anyone else. Because of how that equality works, no class-related information is awarded nor factored into the success of practicing a profession. Instead, practicing a profession (or a task that a profession will use) grants you experience towards a related trade skill.
Trade skills will be used (among other things) to produce items, capture animals, construct buildings, enchant players and items, etc. While none of these accomplishments will bear a player a direct experience award for their character class, some of these accomplishments may indirectly assist a player in gaining class-related experience, such as the forging of better armor and weapons, the enchantment of those items or weapons -- or players or necklaces, the construction of buildings and areas to forge alliances with NPCs that may assist them in battle, etc.
The Profession system real beauty and purpose is to lend a sense of purpose and community to players beyond their class/guild, as nearly all the professions are useful to many of the classes. There is a huge potential for role-playing the professions and I know some of you are excited to dig in! For those of you who aren't, while you may be missing out on some fun, you won't be penalizing your class advancement in any way if you do not decide to practice a profession or exercise trade skills.
While some of the activities you have been able to perform in the past are starting to yield some trade skill experience, the trade skill and profession systems are not fully developed nor ready for game-wide release. So as of right now, we are not releasing any professions yet. We intend to release many at one time (to help lessen the feel that you guys will need to choose from the few that are available).
Stay tuned to our Developmental Schedule And Direction page for details on further releases:
www.eaxia.com/direction.php