On Burning Crusade and Reputation
Jun. 9th, 2015 02:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hakkariToday, after literally 8 years of on and off grinding, I finally reached exalted with the Netherwing dragons.
...Look, I procrastinate. It's kind of a thing I do.
The reason I ended up finally getting to it is because I discovered an achievement that requires you get certain dragon mounts (most of which are old and badly textured) in order to get another old and badly textured dragon. My entire goal in World of Warcraft is to collect as many dragons as possible. It's my weakness.
This achievement has, of course, been out since Cataclysm. Timeliness is not my strong point.
But as I turned in my last Netherwing Egg (that I happened to stumble upon and that an orc cursed me out for taking (I'm pretty sure) and went through the long arduous process of riding the world's slowest dragon halfway across Outlands, I realized something.
As annoying as a lot of Outlands was and how tedious a lot of it is now, there were still good parts to it. I mean I'm pretty sure no one can fight me on Karazhan being the Best Raid Instance Ever (except for the damn chess event but that was definitely a lot cooler back in the day). But what I mean is how its dailies and reputation gains were structured.
Blizzard has been on record as saying they don't want to overload people with daily rep quests because they become tedious. While I agree to a certain extent (Having to run around for 20 minutes trying to find disgruntled orcs to boot should be worth more than 250/350 rep), grinding in Veil Anzu to get the last 27k reputation for my Talon Queen title isn't any more fun or exciting than doing those quests.
Perhaps they should reevalute their current system.
Surely a mix of BC and Wrath would be best? Where you don a tabard through dungeons to earn reputation for your faction but also have interesting dailies and item turn ins to continue that?
The only reason I single out BC versus Wrath alone is that as cool as the Argent Tournament was for the first week, the rewards hardly matched the effort gained. Sure you got some vanity pets, but compared to NETHERDRAKES and the Nether Ray things you got from the Sha'tari Skyguard? They were absolutely nothing (I'm pretty sure you could get a mount from Argent Tourney as well).
Perhaps it had to do with how special Netherdrakes and other special mounts were. After all, this was a time that people did hardcore quests and heroics in order to get Epic Flight Form and the Raven God mount. Back then the only common flying mounts were gryphons and wyverns, so riding a dragon around was kind of a status symbol.
Nowadays everyone and their mom can easily get a dragon (I should know since I'm very much one of those people) and while that's not bad it makes figuring out what a good reward should be rather difficult.
Titles? Easy to get through world events and old raids. You can't get much cooler than the SAVIOR OF AZEROTH which is now easy to solo.
Mounts? See the above. It's worth noting that most of WOD's "unique" mounts are retextured wolves and boars.
Achievements? I mean I guess.
This is in no way trying to say that certain things should be locked away for only people who are SUPER EXTREME MEGA MYTHIC RAIDERS (even though they do deserve special rewards too), but there's something missing from the current system. I absolutely hate reputation grinding (see: me taking eight years to get a netherdrake) but I always felt like I was kind of missing out by not doing it and that people who did do it were to be commended. Plus, rep grinding was an activity that everyone could do regardless of raiding or not.
Once again I'm not a person who believes that BC and Vanilla were the only True Times of WoW. Because I dislike that mindset a lot (though honestly I do believe that Wrath was probably the best expansion just in overall terms), especially since I've been enjoying how WoD handles story and character development. But I do think that Blizzard shouldn't just chuck everything from those times out the window.
There's still perfecting to be done and I feel like WoD actually took a step back in that regard, despite its step forward.
...Look, I procrastinate. It's kind of a thing I do.
The reason I ended up finally getting to it is because I discovered an achievement that requires you get certain dragon mounts (most of which are old and badly textured) in order to get another old and badly textured dragon. My entire goal in World of Warcraft is to collect as many dragons as possible. It's my weakness.
This achievement has, of course, been out since Cataclysm. Timeliness is not my strong point.
But as I turned in my last Netherwing Egg (that I happened to stumble upon and that an orc cursed me out for taking (I'm pretty sure) and went through the long arduous process of riding the world's slowest dragon halfway across Outlands, I realized something.
As annoying as a lot of Outlands was and how tedious a lot of it is now, there were still good parts to it. I mean I'm pretty sure no one can fight me on Karazhan being the Best Raid Instance Ever (except for the damn chess event but that was definitely a lot cooler back in the day). But what I mean is how its dailies and reputation gains were structured.
Blizzard has been on record as saying they don't want to overload people with daily rep quests because they become tedious. While I agree to a certain extent (Having to run around for 20 minutes trying to find disgruntled orcs to boot should be worth more than 250/350 rep), grinding in Veil Anzu to get the last 27k reputation for my Talon Queen title isn't any more fun or exciting than doing those quests.
Perhaps they should reevalute their current system.
Surely a mix of BC and Wrath would be best? Where you don a tabard through dungeons to earn reputation for your faction but also have interesting dailies and item turn ins to continue that?
The only reason I single out BC versus Wrath alone is that as cool as the Argent Tournament was for the first week, the rewards hardly matched the effort gained. Sure you got some vanity pets, but compared to NETHERDRAKES and the Nether Ray things you got from the Sha'tari Skyguard? They were absolutely nothing (I'm pretty sure you could get a mount from Argent Tourney as well).
Perhaps it had to do with how special Netherdrakes and other special mounts were. After all, this was a time that people did hardcore quests and heroics in order to get Epic Flight Form and the Raven God mount. Back then the only common flying mounts were gryphons and wyverns, so riding a dragon around was kind of a status symbol.
Nowadays everyone and their mom can easily get a dragon (I should know since I'm very much one of those people) and while that's not bad it makes figuring out what a good reward should be rather difficult.
Titles? Easy to get through world events and old raids. You can't get much cooler than the SAVIOR OF AZEROTH which is now easy to solo.
Mounts? See the above. It's worth noting that most of WOD's "unique" mounts are retextured wolves and boars.
Achievements? I mean I guess.
This is in no way trying to say that certain things should be locked away for only people who are SUPER EXTREME MEGA MYTHIC RAIDERS (even though they do deserve special rewards too), but there's something missing from the current system. I absolutely hate reputation grinding (see: me taking eight years to get a netherdrake) but I always felt like I was kind of missing out by not doing it and that people who did do it were to be commended. Plus, rep grinding was an activity that everyone could do regardless of raiding or not.
Once again I'm not a person who believes that BC and Vanilla were the only True Times of WoW. Because I dislike that mindset a lot (though honestly I do believe that Wrath was probably the best expansion just in overall terms), especially since I've been enjoying how WoD handles story and character development. But I do think that Blizzard shouldn't just chuck everything from those times out the window.
There's still perfecting to be done and I feel like WoD actually took a step back in that regard, despite its step forward.
