Good news

[Raelynn]

Blue post

The link basically says that the devs are looking to overhaul the faction system for the expansion. They aren't happy with how "grindy" it is currently. Sounds good to me. :)

[MongoJerry]

Wow! That news is so good, I should put that on the front page! :D

Yeah, I'm glad about that, too. It'll be interesting to see what they do with it. As he said, the whole reputation system was thrown into the game with very little attention given it. The main reputation grind in the beta was the centaur quests in Desolace, and since Desolace was far away and wasn't well developed, only a few crazy people (like Bolty) actually completed the grind. This is another symptom of the problem that most of the development in the game pre-release was devoted toward pre-level capped content and except for the level capped instance dungeons, the high level content was largely unpolished or unfinished. (And even the instance dungeons ended up needing several revisions along the way). The unpolished reputation system, which pre-level 60 was largely irrelevant, became a dominant mode of advancement -- or at least something to do between dungeons -- after the server populations reached level 60. I'm looking forward to the Burning Crusade, because it gives Blizzard a chance to really put some effort into thinking over content and game design for high level and level capped players.

[Raelynn]

Wow! That news is so good, I should put that on the front page! :D

I just noticed it half an hour after I posted. Then again, I'm one of those people that rarely looks at the front page. :D

[Bolty]

Yeah, I'm glad about that, too. It'll be interesting to see what they do with it. As he said, the whole reputation system was thrown into the game with very little attention given it. The main reputation grind in the beta was the centaur quests in Desolace, and since Desolace was far away and wasn't well developed, only a few crazy people (like Bolty) actually completed the grind.

You're right that I'm crazy; I wanted to see what the point was behind it. I did it once, deemed it complete BS, and have been recommending to people not to bother with it from then on. :)

Still, I wouldn't have too much hope here. All the dev said was that they are "looking into" revising the faction process. The problem is, you *need* some kind of grind in place to keep people playing, and that grind turned out to be reputation. If it wasn't rep, it would have become something else.

I'm finding for my main character that most of the faction grinds to Revered aren't too bad or annoying. Argent Dawn, Zandalar, Cenarian Circle, etc. It's going from Revered to Exalted that the grinds enter the "this is utterly stupid" phase. Even still, the super-hardcore 1% of players actually do them. What else can you put in to keep those 1% happy? Content alone could never be created fast enough to cater to them; there has to be something grindy to keep them busy.

-Bolty

[Monkey]

I've done two reputation grinds to Exalted:
1. Slogged my warrior to Exalted in AV. It gave me lots of opportunity to learn to hate AV and other players . Blizzard said they thought pvp was better with more hate, but I think they meant for me to hate the opposing faction, not the AFK bastards from my own faction.

2. Led a all-guild effort to grind our lead (NE) priest to exalted with Ironforge and buy him an epic goat before he returned from vacation. Much more fun because it was a very social thing. And when you have 50 people sending in gold and runecloth it goes faster.

But overall, I think rep grinding is just yet another reason I'm playing less and less WoW and have stopped even leveling most of my characters. When I read about Neriad's adventures in Yarrrrrrr II, I briefly considered following suit with my rogue. But then I remembered what rep grinding is like.:(

[Tuftears]

ZG Exalted: easy. A lot of ZG runs, but they were fun. Rep gain has increased nicely for ZG lately.

CC Exalted: very, very annoying. AQ20 runs are good of course, but if you want the other rewards, you're going to have to grind a lot of bugs for the combat badges. The combat badges are incredibly dull and annoying. The tactical badges are fine, the logistic badges are okay and add the requisite 'lern2farm' factor. But the combat badges have got to be restructured.

That and getting Field Duties is vexing.

AD Exalted: not yet gotten, halfway through Revered. I can see this being quite a grind at the moment, since the choices are Cauldron runs or doing Scholomance or Stratholme runs for scourgestones.

AV Exalted: halfway through Revered. Getting into an AV is annoying. It wouldn't be bad if there were ways to get AV rep outside the BG, but then no one would actually go and *do* AV.

Thorium Brotherhood: fuggedaboudit. Not going to buy that much dark iron ore just for one recipe, and we picked a volunteer for the Alliance to rep up for it anyway, so it's not like I need it. There need to be more reasons to get high status with TB.

I'm pretty sure Tuftears is my main by now because I'm just not willing to go through the rep grind on my other chars. Heh.

[castille]

I loooove running AV as Genkar. Nothing like being a mini tactical nuclear warhead to brighten one's day. Even the best warrior has trouble dealing with 355-360 mind flay, and 380 SWP ticks;)

[MongoJerry]

But overall, I think rep grinding is just yet another reason I'm playing less and less WoW and have stopped even leveling most of my characters. When I read about Neriad's adventures in Yarrrrrrr II, I briefly considered following suit with my rogue. But then I remembered what rep grinding is like.:(

Get some friends who can aoe and some healers who can keep them healed and get your hat in one evening!

Cenarian Circle rep isn't too bad to grind up, because there are so many ways to get it and the rewards for the various quests are pretty good. If you want to avoid the combat quests or killing all those twilght bosses, though, you can do what a lot of people do and get Exalted simply by grinding and buying twilght texts off the auction house. It also helps to be raiding, of course, because you can get quite a lot of reputation from AQ20 and AQ40.

What's interesting to me is the Brood of Nozdormu rep. It's like the Hydraxian Waterlords reputation done better (not perfect but better). You get reputation up to the top end of neutral very quickly by killing trash mobs. Then, you turn in the markers you get off the boss mobs you kill for 500 rep each. At neutral, you get a fairly nice ring that improves with each reputation level. There's plenty of joking about "Oh wow! At Revered I get a whole +1 damage/healing!" but it only takes a couple of months of raiding AQ40 to get Exalted with the Brood and in the end you get a very nice ring out of it.

I don't think it'll take long to get to Exalted with the Argent Dawn next patch with all the Scourge Invasion quests that will become available. I was already about 12k into Revered because of how many times I ran the undead instances back in the day and because I did the cauldron quests for a few thousand rep. I'm still bitter about not knowing to save my Argent Dawn honor tokens until after I hit revered. I didn't know I'd stop getting rep from the mobs in the instances. If I had saved my tokens, I would've been a lot higher rep. So, when I found out about the expl... "creative use of game mechanics" involving the shades of Jandice Barov, I went ahead and joined some guildmates and used it to get Exalted. I'm not exactly proud of doing that, but the expl... "CUGM" was actually an interesting experiment in game mechanics itself. It was hotfixed the next day.

[Sabra]

Saved!!!!

[MongoJerry]

According to a post on the test realm forum, the new PTR patch notes have some significant changes that will make grinding Cenarian Circle reputation much easier:

Cenarion Circle

• A new quest is available at Cenarion Hold for players who wish to turn in Combat, Logistics and Tactical Badges for repuation.
  <>
  
• Combat Missions from the Field Duty questline in Silithus are now received in batches of four (all hitting the same hive)
  <>
  
• Envelopes for all Field Duty Assignments are now non-unique
  <>
  
• Unsigned Field Duty Papers now need to be "prepared" by players by right-clicking on them. This action has a 3-minute cooldown.
  <>
  
• Completing the Field Duty quest has a
  reputation reward once again.<>
  [st]

[Zarathustra]

[*]Unsigned Field Duty Papers now need to be "prepared" by players by right-clicking on them. This action has a 3-minute cooldown.

[*]Completing the Field Duty quest has a
reputation reward once again.
[st][/i]

Good change, though I can see why they took out the rep in the first place. It was possible to equp a carrot, enchanted gloves, and a pair of spurs, and get two Field Duty quests done for one bug kill if you were quick enough (Alliance side).

[MongoJerry]

Good change, though I can see why they took out the rep in the first place. It was possible to equp a carrot, enchanted gloves, and a pair of spurs, and get two Field Duty quests done for one bug kill if you were quick enough (Alliance side).

I suspect that teleport hackers were taking advantage of this to get a dozen of them signed per bug kill. I suppose you could do this with two warlock teams summoning people back and forth.

[theo]

Blue post

The link basically says that the devs are looking to overhaul the faction system for the expansion. They aren't happy with how "grindy" it is currently. Sounds good to me. :)

Sounds like a good idea.

[Zarathustra]

Seems their method - if the 1.11 patch is any indication - is one of distraction.

Blizzard seems to be giving all sorts of things to do which just happen to give rep as a bonus. The big one for the Argent Dawn is turning in the insignias for items. Sure, you're doing it for the various insignias. But at the same time you're getting 50 rep for acquiring each insignia. That adds up over time when you're trying to purchase the more expensive epic items.

For what it's worth, it works well. Head out and down a Necropolis, gather what you need for a few insignias, do quests, and then at the end of the day you realize you got a healthy chunk of reputation.

[oldmandennis]

Seems their method - if the 1.11 patch is any indication - is one of distraction.
For what it's worth, it works well. Head out and down a Necropolis, gather what you need for a few insignias, do quests, and then at the end of the day you realize you got a healthy chunk of reputation.

I agree... except you can't get insignias from necropolises.

[Zarathustra]

I agree... except you can't get insignias from necropolises.

No, you get Necrotic Runes which can be turned in for various goods and - hey, look at that! - rep for each turnin. Additionall the Doom Shadows give 50 rep per kill and each drop 1 Corruptor's Stone and 30some Necrotic Runes.

Edit: Oh, I see what you were getting at. Perhaps I didn't phrase that well... didn't mean to imply insignias could be reaped from the Necropolis invasions.

[MongoJerry]

It's insane how even solo mages can farm those invasion camps. I farmed some of the camps with Vendetta, one of our guild's mages. He'd get on his mount, ride around and aggro the whole camp (they don't seem to be able to knock people off their mounts), and then aoe the whole thing. The rest of us were there to act as cheerleaders. I tried healing at first, but the mobs don't hit very hard. So, I eventually began running in and Holy Nova'ing just to get the feeling that I was doing something.

Last night, one of our mages who was sitting out our guild's AQ40 run reported getting over 250 necrotic runes by farming the camps solo.

[Quark]

All they needed to do was add in a ranged attack. That's it. And this was blatantly advertised on the forums. What a completely awful oversight.