Choose Your Grind: Reputation

Throughout the history of the game, and all games similar, there have been factions you wanted to get reputation with and there have been many ways to go about getting it.  From extremely difficult to so easy you did not even notice you were getting reputation to begin with.

Each person likes what they like.  There is no right or wrong when it comes to someones opinion.  There is always a clear cut easy vs hard when it comes to doing them but even that is only clear cut from the outside looking in.  Some might say dailies are easy so the grind is easy but that is not want I mean.  People will like to do what they like to do.

Which of the types of reputation gaining techniques do you like and dislike?

Collecting:

This is the oldest style of reputation grind in the game.  You could collect runecloth and turn it is for reputation with the main factions on your side.  It wasn't a daily as you could do it as many times as you would like, some call it a repeatable but I save that definition for a different type of grind.  This was a clear collecting grind.  Something that was not in your quest log, just collect and turn in.  A modern example would be the dread amber shards for the klaxxi.  That is a collecting quest.

My Opinion:  I like collecting quests for reputation and think there should be more of them.  They are not required, as they were back in the day if you wanted reputation, but they can be used to help speed things along.  I think all factions should have at least one collecting daily.

Repeatable:

A repeatable quest is a quest you pick up and can do over and over as long as you are willing to do them over and over.  I am sure I am wrong but I do not think there are many repeatable quests in the game any more, I can only think of a few.  The wintersaber quest line, as it was, was a perfect example of a repeatable quest line.  You pick up a quest to collect some meat, you finish the quest and turn it in, the quest appears there again to be offered to you should you want to do it again.  And I did. 

I do not think there are any modern examples of a repeatable quests in game.  If anyone wants to see one the only faction I can recall that offers repeatable quests are the sporeggar, a BC faction, who offer a few.  One of which is the humorously titled monty python tribute named bring me a shrubbery.  I think this might be the last repeatable quest hub in the game for gaining reputation.

My Opinion:  I do like repeatable quest for the same reason I like collecting quests.  It lets the player create their own pace.  They can get reputation other ways but they can speed it up if they want to doing these multiple times.  You also won't feel like you are trapped to do it every day, you can do it 7 times on sunday when you are free and not at all the rest of the week and be in the same position as someone that does it every day but only once.  I would like to see every faction have at least one repeatable quest.

Kill Credit:

Kill credit reputation is when you kill a specific mob that gives you reputation with a particular faction.  The kill credit reputation goes as far back as the game and some even had negative kill credit where you would lose reputation with one faction when you kill something.  I don't believe there are any of those outside of vanilla content.  The closest thing we have to kill credit reputation is black price reputation now.  Each kill of a specific type of mob will gain you a small amount of reputation.

My Opinion:  I always loved kill credit reputation grinds.  Another one of those move at your own pace reputation gain.  If you want to spend all day killing to get your reputation up faster more power to you.  Might only be 10 at a time, but it leaves it up to you, the player.  I'd like to see more of those.

Profession Based:

Profession based reputation gaining quests are few and far between and they usually seem to leave someone complaining about them as they are usually gathering type quests and people without gathering skills would be left behind.  There are however updated profession based quests in mists which use secondary skills for dailies to get a little bit of reputation.  For the cloud serpents you can use archaeology, first aid, fishing and cooking to do dailies for some reputation and these are more fair to everyone because while someone might not have a gathering profession everyone has the ability to have secondary professions.

My Opinion:  They are not a bad way to add a small boost to reputation on a daily basis, even more so when using the secondary profession as to not leave anyone without the chance to use them.  I would not be adverse to seeing every faction have at least one of these types of quests.

Dungeon / Raid Kills:

Like the kill credit reputation grind these give reputation for killing things but only in a specific dungeon or raid.  This type of reputation gain started with the game and molten core and was perfected, in my opinion, in the burning crusade.  Since then we have seen every expansion use this type of gain for at least one reputation.  The ashen verdict in ICC and avengers of hyjal in firelands.  So I would be willing to guess we will see one in mists as well.

My Opinion:  Reputation runs were always a good way to pug and get to know people.  My guild recruited a few people from rep runs in wrath and cataclysm thanks to them.  It always made for a decent way to gear an alt because with rep runs came drops and came reputation gear that could be purchased with gold.  I think every raid should have a reputation tied to it and enough trash before the first boss to make rep runs worth running.  It is good for the game, in my opinion at least.

Crafting:

This type of reputation based quest is few and far between and unless I am mistaken, it is also completely gone.  Anyone, like myself, that did darkmoon reputation before it was easy like it is now will tell you the hard work of leveling through crafting quests.  Sure the starter ones for darkmoon were not bad but crafting decks and buying decks just to turn in and then sell the trinket made for a long journey to exalted.  I doubt you would hear many people say good things about crafting quests to get reputation up and perhaps that is why we do not see them any more.

My Opinion:  I think there is a place for these in game as a minimal reputation gaining addition and it could be used to spur the market for all professions by making the things you trade in daily, something that can be sold on the market, thus creating a secondary market for all profession but if we never see this type of reputation gainer in game again I won't complain.

Bounce Around:

The bounce around reputation grind was a type of repeatable quest that was much harder.  Instead of collecting 12 bear meat or something like that you needed to collect items from three different dungeons, some of them being rare drops, and then turn them in for reputation.  These reputation grinds were always the hardest ones and even if you went back and did them when you were a higher level they were still amazingly time consuming.  There are no remaining factions that require you to get reputation like this and I doubt we will ever see a return to that grind design.

My Opinion:  While I would not mind a more involved repeatable I would not care to do something like the bounce around again.  I would, if I felt I had to, but the game has changed, it does not move at the pace it did before any more and a grind like this would mean it puts you behind in other aspects of the game.  There is no place for a grind like this ever again and I do not believe we will see one.

PvP:

Fight a battlegound, finish objectives, get reputation.  I have yet to get one PvP faction exalted.  The three there are in the game are three of the only four reputations I do not have maxed.  It seems that the PvP faction reputations are a forgotten thing and it seems like we will never see it return.

My Opinion:  I might not be a PvPer and I might not have the three that are already in game maxed but that does not change the fact I think every battleground should have a reputation tied to it.  As long as there is nothing anyone would consider required that comes from it, why not?  Shouldn't you be getting some reputation as a form of thanks for helping the faction you are helping in a battleground?

Tabards:

With wrath a new way to gain reputation came with it.  The tabard system.  You would put on a tabard and gain reputation for the faction you were wearing it for.  This was added before the addition of the random dungeon finder and making note of that is very important because the functionality of the tabard wearing system changed completely once that came out. 

The concept was that instead of doing it like they did in BC were each dungeon had its specific faction you could pick the faction you wanted and do any dungeon to get that reputation.  Being there was still the group assembling time to consider, even with a tabard, gaining reputation could still take time and effort.  Once catalcysm came out, an expansion that started with the dungeon finder already a part of it, it completely trivialized gaining reputation.  People were running dungeons anyway for gear and getting reputation for doing something they were going to do anyway.  The only recent comparison would be buying the tabard for your new panda friends and upping their reputation in your dungeons.

My Opinion:  Good riddance and I hope we never see this system of reputation gain again.  While I do not mind running dungeons for reputation this seemed to make reputation completely irrelevant.  Sort of, why is it even there if I can get it this easy without even doing anything I wasn't going to do anyway while capping my valor for the week and gearing up.  The tabard idea was solid, the tabard + random dungeon finder was not.  Can't remove the dungeon finder so remove the tabard, that is what happened here and I agree with it.

Buy It:

The reputation you buy is not seen often, as a matter of fact I can only think of one time we had any reputation we could buy and that was at the tail end of wrath when you could spend emblems for tokens to use for reputations.  It was not a bad idea for late in the expansion when people were leveling alts but that on top of the tabard system extended the trivialization of reputation to an extreme level.

My Opinion:  Being there is nothing really to spend justice on this expansion and reputation is so important I think it is time we see a return of this to help alts.  Perhaps 1000 justice for 500 reputation and make them BoA.  It would not be a lot of reputation but it would be a nice little boost to alts to help them along even more and a use for the otherwise completely useless justice points.

Dailies:

The staple of the reputation grind as we know it and something that has been around for a while now.  It is the single best way to gain reputation hands down.  There are even different feels of dailies as this expansion shows.  Doing the 3 anglers quests will net you roughly the same reputation that doing the 12 or so golden lotus ones will.  Dailies are something that began in BC and have grown to be more and more a part of the game.  Most of the dailies you did in BC were for cosmetic purposes.  You wanted mounts or a tabard or what have you so you did dailies for that faction to earn reputation.  It grew to being needed for certain enchants and now all valor gear.  Dailies have went from completely optional to completely mandatory to those that want to give it their best.

My Opinion:  Dailies are great to gain reputation and now other things as well.  They have always been a staple of making some extra gold by having quests you can do every day and even in wrath the aspiring mogul would do argent ones on all their characters to get pets to sell to people that did not want to put in the effort.  Many people complain about dailies right now but they are an important part of our game and the time we spend in it, like it or not, and not just for reputation or gold any more.  I like that they added more to them.

As you can see from my opinions, I like the grind of reputation as the only type of grind I truly disliked was the one that completely removed the feeling that I was earning something, the tabard technique, while many people seem to think that was the best way to get reputation ever.  To each their own but as I see it what it all comes down to is I like to grind and feel like I earned something even if it takes time and others just like to get it done as fast as possible with as little effort as possible.

If blizzard were to use the history of reputation gains and incorporate more options into each grind I think it would be possible to please both me and those like me, who like the grind, and others, who don't.  Adding kill credit, repeatable and collecting quests and maybe even buying it lets me grind it faster, so I get to grind and still feel like I am grinding even if it is faster, and it lets people that just want to get it done be able to do it as fast as possible if they put some effort in.

Reputation gains and how we gain it has changed a lot over the years, it is ever evolving, I can't wait to see what the next expansion might bring.