Will Upgrades Change the Welfare Mentality?

I've bought up this welfare gear topic before but thinking about the new upgrade system to gear it has me thinking about it again.  People like to call point/emblem gear welfare gear and I've often stated that those people are about as off base on their assessment as a penguin would be sun bathing in the Bahamas.

If spending points is "welfare" to those people that do not understand the definition of the word, what is upgrading gear?  Being you will use valor points to upgrade it would that mean they are welfare upgrades?

There is no difference between someone buying the valor legs because it is an upgrade or upgrading the raid legs with valor.  Both people saw an upgrade, worked to earn some valor, and got the upgrade they needed.

I think that upgrading gear with valor points just proved my point for me.  Valor gear is earned gear.  Raid gear is for the instant gratification crowd that just wants to kill a boss and collect loot, no additional work required.

Lets just look at the facts.  Take a pair of pants that cost 2250 to buy with valor.

How much work would it take to get them:

Daily quests (without valor of the ancients) : 450 daily quests
Daily quests (with valor of the ancients) : 300 daily quests
Dungeon (one per day only) : 29 dungeons at one per day
Scenarios (one per day only) : 57 scenarios at one per day
Raid Bosses (before buff) : 90 kills
Raid Bosses (after buff) : 57 kills

As you can see, when it comes to buying gear there is no easy way to get it.  It is going to take a fair deal of work and a fair deal of time.  Added to that, you can only get 1000 valor per week so you would be limited on how fast you can get things. 

A raider can get a full set of gear while raiding all in one week with some luck, because it is freebie gear you do not need to work for as loot always drops from bosses.  Raid gear and its guaranteed drops that do not limit you to how quickly you can gear up is for the instant gratification crowd that does not believe gear should be earned, it should be lucked into when killing something you were going to kill even if it dropped nothing for you anyway. 

For the valor gear people they have to earn it but have an artificial wall put in to slow them down so that even if they do everything they can in game and work their asses off as in doing every daily every day, all raid bosses, and running dungeons and scenarios until their eyes bleed, they can not get it any faster as they are capped at 1000 per week.  Best case would be to mix and match a little of each and cap each week and still wait 3 weeks to get your new purple pants.

Valor gear is welfare gear?

Welfare my ass, that is hard work.  450 daily quests are not just going to do themselves

Raid gear is welfare gear if people really feel the need to use the word for something.  You kill a boss and get your 40 (was 25) valor.  That is your pay for doing the job of killing it.  The loot that drops off of it is bonus stuff, as in extra stuff you get for doing something you were going to do anyway.  If you use a coin you can even win two things instead of just one but at least you had to earn the coin to use it.  Getting loot off a boss you have already been paid for, in terms of valor as we already recognize that as the currency for gear, is welfare gear

Now I know many people will never agree with me and will continue to call valor gear welfare gear.  I will just respectfully say we can agree to disagree.  But that does not change the fact that having upgrades for gear has to change the perspective of some of them on valor gear as once you upgrade a piece of gear it is now valor gear.  It is no longer a raid piece, it is a piece that could not exists if it were not for valor.

I wonder if those people that like to call valor gear welfare gear will consider themselves as walking around with welfare upgrades?  Perhaps someone will say to them, nice welfare upgrades you got there and they will be sure to respond, I earned this gear raiding and worked my ass off to upgrade it.

I will silently sit back and laugh and think, you did not earn it raiding, you got lucky with loot that drops from something you were going to kill anyway even if nothing dropped for you.  And how if you worked your ass off to upgrade it, but someone that worked their ass off to buy it, is theirs welfare and not yours?

The community, on average, is not smart enough to realize that valor gear is the only gear (outside of PvP gear) that you actually earn in the game so they will not be capable of realizing that their upgrades come from the same resource that the other persons gear comes from, valor.  If one is welfare, so is the other.  You can't have it both ways.

Lets say you are in best in slot in every slot and you upgrade your gear with valor.  Does it now become welfare gear because you spent valor on it?  I would be willing to bet those insecure people that have to put everyone that is not as good as them or not in a guild as good as theirs down for using their valor on gear when they used their valor on upgrades when both do the exact same thing, upgrade a piece you have.  The only difference is one was BiS and one was not even close.  But valor was used for the same thing in both cases, an upgrade.

Valor is currency, earned currency, and what you spend it on doesn't matter.  Upgrades or gear, you earn them either way.  Maybe all those uninformed people that keep calling valor gear welfare gear might begin to learn the value of work and earning something when they want to upgrade their gear.  When they realize that earning valor is not as easy as looting a boss you were going to kill anyway and getting your loot when they now need to actually work to get valor to upgrade it putting them in the same boat as the people that bought valor gear in the fist place.  Needing valor for their gear. 

I wonder what the shock to their system will be like when they are limited as well.  Instead of just winning gear and putting it on and letting the instant gratification moment bring a smile to their face they now need to earn 1500 valor to upgrade that piece and unless they have some stocked up they will not be able to upgrade it instantly, like they have become used to having it ready all at once being when it comes to raid gear it is as simple as pick it up and put it on, no long drawn out work involved. 

Now it will take them two weeks and a lot of work if they want to upgrade the piece they just got as a drop.  It is suddenly hard work.  It is no longer win gear and do the gem, enchant, reforge thing, they now need to earn, work for it if you will, 1500 valor to upgrade that piece of gear.  It is no longer good enough as is.  A shock to the system of a person that has been playing the lazy route to loot since point/emblem gear was introduced.

Someone that is trying, actually trying to be the best they can be, like people grinding valor to buy gear that they can not get otherwise try to get the best they can in the one way available to them, the raider that used to just get their drops and run with it now need 1500 valor for every single raid piece they get.  If they want to give the appearing they are trying to be the best they can, you can judge that by how many of those BiS pieces they actually worked their asses off to upgrade.

In the end I would have a lot more respect for someone that has all valor gear over an all raid geared player that is not upgraded because the valor decked out person worked their ass off for that gear and the raid geared person with few or no upgrades is just lazy and only has gear because he got lucky enough to get a drop off a boss.

The valor gear player is my type of player, they will do whatever it takes to have the best gear they can get even if they are not raiding or not lucky with drops.  They will work as hard as they can to be as best geared as they can.  I like players that give 100%.  Just sitting around waiting on a raid drop screams of the lazy instant gratification crowd, you know the type, they are the first ones to say that someone else has welfare gear.

So whenever you hear someone use the words "welfare gear" when referencing valor gear point out to them that if they really believe that they should not upgrade their gear with welfare upgrades or they will be just as bad as those people in that ~shutters~ welfare gear.

Will the thoughts on valor gear change now that the raiders that used to say they do not need valor gear now need the valor, for their gear?

The Pandas or The People

I mentioned my dislike for the golden lotus dailies a few times and even made a full post about it yesterday but I wonder where my dislike for them really comes from.

It is not like the quests are any different then other quests.  Kill 8 of these, go click on this, go use this item on 6 people, you know, the basics that every quest in every fantasy MMORPG ever.  So why do I dislike the golden lotus ones so much if they are no different than any other quest hub in the game.

At first look I would think it could be the number of quests.  You do one quest hub to get sent to another quest hub and then to a third quest hub.  It is like doing 3 sets of dailies for the reputation that one set of dailies give you anywhere else.  That could be it right?

I remember when I was trying to finish off all the achievements and the random nature of them and their three tier dailies were getting on my nerves.  All I needed were the achievements from the quest hub(s) at the setting sun garrison and I could not get sent there for the life of me.  I was already past exalted before I got there and got the quests from there that would allow me to get the achievement.  That could be it right?

Those sprites and the quests where you need to kill them can be a nightmare for most classes but no more than say, collecting goat steaks, or turtle meat.  While it was not a drop rate thing that made them annoying like those others it was the fact that if you close your eyes for a second you could have 6 of them on you and they all run in their own directions so AoEing them is not always an option but like anything else, you out gear it and/or learn how to pull one at a time if you have not out geared it.  Nothing different from adjusting to those charging goats that have killed so many.  But this could be it right?

Maybe where you start got to me on a subconscious level being you are basically at 0 neutral or a little above if you happened to run into the few quests they had to offer.  Not even friendly when you start off when the other faction of its like, a gear faction, the klaxxi you were honored when you started the grind when you hit 90 and that was even before the changes, now you will be well into revered when you hit 90.  Maybe it is this?

The 100 reputation, more with bonuses, per quest does seem like you are banging your head against the wall but there are a fair deal of quests there and it adds up.  Sure, I can get as much angler reputation in 3 quests and one tenth of the time spent doing them as I do with the lotus in one day, but I have no aversion to spending time and making an effort.  You are talking someone with more than 65 exalted reputation and many of them were gained before they became a joke to get like they are now.  But could it be this?

Maybe it is the time involved.  But when I did it on my main, which did not have that double reputation, I had every single faction to exalted in 3 weeks of release and I do not know about you but 3 weeks is not exactly what I call a long reputation grind.  Go get the reputation for something like the molten core and see how many weeks that takes even if it is super easy for any class in the game to do it, now that is long.  Golden lotus does not take a lot of time really and anyone that says it does is dead wrong.  Doesn't mean it isn't this right?

There are many things I might dislike about them but none of them are reasonable.  The quests are no different than any others.  All hubs have some annoying quests.  Random is random and while annoying, I will get my achievements sooner or later and I know that.  Reputation gains, and the grind involved, is fun for me, call me weird.  So why do I dislike them?

So why do I hate the golden lotus quests so much when I really have no reason to hate them, design wise that is.  I think it is the people that do them that annoy me the most.

Those dailies seem to be the dailies people do the most, outside of the tiller ones.  It seems being other factions are locked behind them everyone is doing them.  It could also be that because it is so close to the new home city people pop out and do those while waiting in queue for a random or just for some valor or something to do.  The requirement to do them, the fact there are a lot of them to do and they give you gold, valor, and lesser tokens, all that means lots of people doing them all the time.

The worst part is that with more people means more jerks.   Like one mage on my server who loves to grief everyone on my server when there is the quest to collect the barrels from the sprites.  When someone hits a sprite he runs over and grabs the barrel and laughs at them.  He keeps this up all day long.  My guess is he is trowing them away once he gets them which is what is allowing him to keep doing this.

He made such a big deal about doing it and saying how cool it is that he has created a following and now there are more people doing it.  If that happens to be the golden lotus daily of the day it is not even worth doing.  Him and his low life scum friends will make sure to screw everyone over and keep them from getting barrels.

I had only one run in with him.  That one time I attacked two and he took the barrels and then did the laugh emote at me.  I whispered him one word, jerk.  He responded, cry more baby.  I said, not crying, just pointing out you are a jerk.  He said F you, then whispered again, if you don't like it leave, then added a third whisper saying to I should go screw myself.  Finally I answered him back and said, if you get that upset because someone calls you a jerk maybe you should stop acting like one.  Needless to say he left me alone after that and went to try to annoy someone else.  Goes to show you that people like that can dish it out but can not take it.  All I did was call him a jerk and he freaked out.  Someone has issues wouldn't you say? 

The sad part is, most people will not defend themselves or keep their cool like I did.  A study of online interaction says that more often than not people take things like this personal.  It did not bother me because I am one of those people that just don't care, about anything really.  So it does not bother me like it does most.  See, I can be just as big a jerk as he is and I generally ignore people like him.  So he can not get to me but it does get to a lot of people.  I've heard three stories of people getting a warning because of language they used in whispers to him, yet strangely enough nothing has ever been done to him.  One person even server transferred off my server because of him.

The problem is that he is not a rarity.  He is just the one I mentioned.  There are dozens of people like him running around the golden lotus area, perhaps because it is so close to the main city, doing whatever they can to ruin everyone elses play time.

Other favorites of the area are the jerks like hunters with FD, paladins with bubble, night elves with shadowmeld, rogues with vanish, and many other aggro dump abilities that round up massive packs and look for unsuspecting victims to drop them all on and kill them.  Then they teabag the bodies and laugh at them.

Have the quest for the relic?  You are not getting it on my server.  There will always be someone standing there waiting for someone else to open it up so they can take it.  One guild mate had this happen 7 times in a row until he just gave up and came back a few hours later because people, usually the same people, grief the relic by standing on it and taking it from others over and over. Of course they do the point and laugh afterwards just to rub in how cool and awesome they are and you are just a nerd for playing a video game.  Not kidding with that comment.  One of those jerks said in trade something just like that when someone complained about the jerks in the lotus questing areas.  He said, you are just jealous because I am not some nerd like you, I play to have fun and keeping you from completing the quest is fun, go nerd rage elsewhere.  See, it makes him cool... to the people with brain damage maybe.

I've been lucky over all.  I've only had one run in with the barrel guy and I think I made him cry because I was so mean calling him a jerk.  I never had any relic issues and if someone drops a lot of mobs on me, as long as they are not tagged and I can tag them for myself, I say thank you for rounding them up for me.  But that does not change the fact I hate these people and my server is overflowing with them.  It seems like every third person is out to fuck everyone else over just for the fun of it.

Why do I hate the golden lotus?  Is it the pandas or the people?

Perhaps wanting to set that rogue pandas fur on fire while he is in a cage is misplaced anger.  And pretty darn mean.  It is not the golden lotus I dislike doing those quests because of, it is the player base that makes me hate doing them.

Once again, good game design is ruined by low life people and blizzards inaction to moderate their own community.  Amazing how people that went off on the jerks received warnings or bans but the jerks themselves didn't.  Even with my one and only interaction with one, I can tell you for sure they do get rude in their remarks.  Why did blizzard not ban them?

Blizzard could fix the problems there.  Tag the barrel for the person that hit the mob and made him drop it. Make the relic lootable for 30 seconds after it is opened by everyone, so no more having it stolen from under you.  Everyone likes to say that the bad community is not blizzards fault, but they are wrong.  Blizzard created these ways that the jerks use to harass people, that means it is blizzards fault.  Blizzard should know how people act better, they are not some rookie to the gaming industry.

On average people are scum and blizzard should know that by now.  Just look at the original LFR loot rules.  They were fine the way they were.  It was the massive collection of jerks that rolled on items they did not need that made the original system crap.  I saw nothing wrong with the loot system, if you need it you need it, if you want it but you do not need it, greed it.  Main spec is a need, offspec is a greed.  Standard rules of every raid ever in the history of the game.  Standard rules every decent person that plays the game follows without being told they need to.  Too bad the people that play the game are scum.  That is the reason the loot system had to change, not because it was bad but because the player base was horrible.

That is what it comes down to.  I do not hate the golden lotus quests because of the golden lotus, I hate them because of the people.

Too bad we can't lock those players in cages and set them on fire and their avatars would be gone forever, burnt away into ashes and blown away with the wind.  Yeah, they deserve it more than that poor panda did.

The Golden Lotus Have Me Lost in the New World

I am sure there are many players like me right now in the game.  With 5.1 out we have a clear cut path for our main characters.  New content in terms of dailies and reputation means that is what we are supposed to do.  But what do we do after that?

People like myself work on alts usually to fill that time when we have nothing to do with our mains.  We learn a new role, level in a new spec, generally just try something new to keep things fresh.  Often we would end up having a few classes raid ready every patch even if we were not trying to do so because that is what we did by osmosis basically.

It is not like the last few years, all the way back to wrath.  You would throw on a tabard and spam some dungeons.  It was so simple even an dwarf could do it.  The dungeons gave you a fair deal of valor, enough to cap out multiple characters without even noticing it and the tabard allowed you to get all the reputation you needed which was really only one faction for shoulder enchants.

Now with dungeons being completely useless for capping or as fun content as they offer nothing to even make them worth doing, looking for raid being way to hard for the masses that even the easiest one, MV part 1, can still turn into a nightmare if you get unlucky, and dailies all over the place but still not being a reasonable source of valor I find myself a little lost.

What do I do next?  I have no desire to do dungeons when the reward is clearly not worth the effort and they are not fun.  Scenarios are an even bigger joke than dungeons are as there is zero reward for your effort in them which is usually soloing the thing if you do it as a random because you always get two people that must have purchased their accounts which only makes them stressful. 

On some characters I have no issues doing dailies, like my druid or my shaman but I do not like doing them on my mage or my priest.  Even at that however, I dread, in the full sense of the word, the golden lotus dailies.  The fact they lock me out of the shado-pan dailies and august celestial dailies makes my hate for them even larger than it would be otherwise.

If not for the lockout I would just not do the golden lotus.  I would do all the other dailies on all my other characters and skip golden lotus completely.  Perhaps I would do them on super rare occasion and just forget that they have gear those characters might need.

My alts will all be exalted with all factions not named golden lotus soon, with the exception of the ones those bastards keep me locked out of, and I am left to wonder, what now?

Do I force myself to do a daily hub I should not have to do just so I can do some dailies I would not mind doing?  Do I force myself to spam dungeons to get valor and hope for a pug or LFR gear and just use the valor to upgrade them because the golden lotus have basically locked me out of three other options to spend my valor?  Do I level a new character hoping that soon blizzard will remove the restriction on having to do the golden lotus first?

I am lost.  I have so much to do in the game that I could keep myself and my stable of alts busy for days on end.  Even if I did not work I could probably play 12 hours a day and still not be able to do everything there is to do.  That is amazing and great design, giving me so much to do.  The new expansion offers so much great stuff, so much I enjoy, so much I like, but it also offers the golden lotus.

It is not about gear and opening the other factions for gear.  I can gear other ways, valor gear is nice and can be a boost but it is not really required.  My priest uses her valor to upgrade her 496 gear, why would I use it to buy 489 gear?  It is about my desire to have content that I like to do and I like to do the shado-pan and august celestial dailies leaps and bound more than I like doing the golden lotus ones.

The combination of the golden lotus keeping me from playing the rest of the game by locking me out of two factions unless I do them and no other viable way to gain valor or gear for an alt that does not pug outside of leaving it up to luck in the LFR, and you all know I have none of that, leaves me in a constant state of being lost.

I know the end result is I will have to bite the bullet and do the golden lotus quests to give myself some sense of direction on my alts so they do not feel lost.  I will do them because I hate standing around in the city listening to trade, that just makes my brain melt.

I just feel so lost, so with nothing to do, which is a weird feeling in a world that there is so much to do in and there is a lot I wish to be doing if not for those pandas at the pagoda keeping me from doing it.  I will do them in time, as I run out of alts to level and max in the other areas.  If only they would change it to friendly to open the others, I can bring myself to do two days of dailies, even if it would still be two days of golden lotus dailies more than I want to do.

I wish I could plead to blizzard, help me find my direction, help me from feeling lost in a new world, remove the restriction on the having to do the golden lotus first.  There is a big world out there and I want to take it all in but I would rather not have to do 16 million quests per day for the golden lotus for 10 or so days before I can do it.

I only do dailies once or twice a week on alts and that time would be better spent doing the shado-pan and august celestial dailies I do not mind doing than it would being the golden lotus ones I despise.  Doing the dailies on alts once or twice a week would be 5 - 10 weeks before I open the others and that just does not seem acceptable for alts.  Heck, the fact I need to do them at all does not seem acceptable.  Just let me do the shado-pan and august celestial I want to do, thank you very much.

I am in no way asking for the daily grind to be removed.  I love it, it gives me a sense of purpose and a reason to log in.  I have always been a daily person and I like doing them.  I just want the ability to do the dailies I want to do.  Is that too much to ask?  To let me choose which dailies I do on that one or two days a week I play an alt? 

I just want to stop feeling lost, looking at the door of the lotus on my alts knowing there is so much I could be doing if only they would let me.  It is as if I am forced into slavery for the golden lotus and made to do their bidding before I am allowed to do the other dailies.  I hate the golden lotus and when the time comes I hope that I am given an option to join the enemy and slaughter every single one of those smug pandas.  Perhaps if they were all dead the next alt I level would not have to deal with them blocking their direction.

Now that is a sense of direction I can get into.  One to slaughter every member of the golden lotus.  Make that my golden lotus daily and I might just start to enjoy doing them.  Next time that rogue gets lost I am going to set him on fire while he is in his cage and listen to him scream for mercy as he dies from being burnt to death.

Ah... I feel so much better about the golden lotus now.

See what the golden lotus have done to me, they turned me evil.

The High Pressure of Being Adequate

The expression actually should be using the word excellence but I will settle for adequate because although I like to believe myself a good player and surely capable of more I strive to be at least adequate.  Excellence is reserved for a very few and I am definitely not one of them.  With that said there is nothing holding me, or anyone in game, back from being adequate in everything I, we, do.

For those that might think doing adequate is doing badly I would like to share the common definition of what adequate is.  Adequate means of satisfactory or acceptable quality or quantity.  Sufficient, enough, suitable, appropriate or fit are some synonyms.

If you enter a random group and can say everyone in it did adequate you had an excellent group.  How often do any of us really have the chance to say that they had a group were everyone did their job appropriately?  Damage dealers doing a fair amount of damage for their gear level, following mechanics and avoiding the avoidable.  A healer keeping people healed to the best of their ability and if they are really over geared keeping them full at all times.  A tank that can pull more and keep aggro and maintain rolling cooldowns to make the healers life easier while contributing a fair deal of damage as well so things move along quickly.

I try my best to do what I would believe to be adequate in every thing I do.  Like doing dungeons on my shaman as enhancement after hitting 90 yesterday in quest gear.  I had only DPSed one raid fight in all of cataclysm and two dungeons over that same span of time.  I would have to go back to mid wrath to call on my experience playing enhancement on a regular basis.  So I spent a small amount of time looking around.  Viewed noxxic, icy veins, and a few forums.  Not a lot of work put into it, but enough that I would not have to call on memories 3 or more years old knowing that things have changed. I wanted to make sure I could at least be adequately prepared for the task of playing the role of a damage dealer in the randoms I entered.

I actually looked this all up before I started leveling so I would be able to get those quest mobs down in a timely manner.  I refreshed my memory once I hit 90 because, lets face it, DPSing quest mobs and DPSing group content is not exactly the same thing.

I went into one group with a feral druid, in gear better than mine, was doing 1/3 of the damage I was doing.  Another run had a druid, balance this time, that I was doubling single target and multi target.  Another had a healer that had LFR, valor point, and some real raid gear that could not keep up with what seemed to be like minimal AoE damage as I know it was being I have healed it before myself.

All these people were not doing their job well.  They did not reach the high pressure of being adequate.  Not asking for good, great or excellence even, just adequate and they could not reach that level of play.

I do not ask people to do great, I surely did not do great myself.  On the last fight of the day from my dungeon runs I did 32K DPS.  In my 441 gear I am sure a skilled enhancement shaman could have made me look like a beginner with those numbers, but I did over 25K and for that I believe I did adequate.  Yet we had a damage dealer, one that had me by at least 20 points in item level, doing 11K.

The way I look at it, I am not a damage dealer on my shaman, or my priest who was a previous healer to hit 90 and do the dungeon crawl as a DPS while gearing for heals, and if I can make the effort to at the very least not make myself look foolish why can't everyone else?

Is the high pressure of doing adequate too much for the average player?

As someone posted here I will repeat it.  I am not the average player.  I looked up my rotation online which immediately put me leaps and bounds over that average player.  So I did something the average player would not do, but I wonder why the average player would not do it.  If anything I should be the average player, that is why I describe myself as such.  I do decent or try to and I read up on how to do it.  That should be the average player.

In the day and age of the internet and so many different games and cheat guides of tip books and information everywhere about everything it surely can't be because people do not know there is information out there.  Who of us has never bought, or at least looked at, a help guide when they got a new game?  I used to buy the brady guides when I bought the new final fantasy game.  It was not something out of the ordinary as I am sure most people did the exact same thing I did.

Now, years later, with the internet and everything at your finger tips, there is no reason to ever play a game without picking up a few tips and tricks for free by letting your fingers do the walking and typing a few words into google.  Even if it was something as simple as "how the hell do I play an enhancement shaman" I would be able to find a few good links.  You do not need to be knowledgeable enough to type "enhancement shaman 5.1 rotation" to find it.

I do not consider it pressure to look for this stuff.  It is just the same as me looking in my brady guide to see where I should go or if there are any items I can pick up early on that will help later when I run through the final fantasy game.  I want those tips and tricks not to impress others, no one is going to ever see me playing FF.  I want them to do the best I can, for me only.  And that has carried over to warcraft.  I do not want to do over 25K when I come into a dungeon in quest gear to make myself look good, I want to do it so I can feel I am contributing and thus making my life easier.  The better I do the easier it makes it on me, making it easier on those around me is just a byproduct of it and not really my intention at all.  I couldn't care less about them.  I just want to do the best I can do to make things easier on me.

Why doesn't the majority of the player base do the same thing and try to make their own lives easier by doing at least adequately?

Is it the high pressure of doing so?

I do not take it as pressure to try my best but perhaps I come from a generation of gamer that expects more of themselves and as such more of those around them.  I might not always reach the level I consider adequate, as I said I am not great in any sense of the word, but I do try to always give the best I can and contribute in a meaningful way to the objective of the group which in this case is killing internet dragons.

Many say the reason so many do so badly is because the game fails them and I can see where they are coming from.  You can level easy enough without any real knowledge of your class.  You might die a lot, it might take longer, you might need to group for things you could have done on your own, but you will get there in time.  The game does not teach you.  But in the same breath, the game does not need to.

As I mentioned we are in the information age.  Even before the internet was as big and open and full of information and as much help as it is, there were help guides for games and people routinely purchased them.  All games, even the single player ones, have things in them that you might never notice without the guide to help you along and all games you would be better off reading the guide even if you are great at picking things up on your own as there are often little things in them that you would never find out on your own.

So it is not uncommon to need to look outside of a game for information on how to play the game well.  So while we can blame blizzard for no in game teaching, it is not really their fault.  The looking outside of a game for information precedes wow and even the internet.  They are just sticking to the gamers code.  You can get by without the guide, but the guide will make you good.  Just like one of those final fantasy games.

The biggest difference is that with something like final fantasy if you did not get the guide and do not know the tips and tricks you can still get it done, it will just take longer.  And that is where I think the problem comes in.  Warcraft is not a single player game.  You can not move at your own pace.  You can not bring your character to level 99 when you could have beat the boss at level 30 without much effort.  You need to do better because there are others depending on you to be, at the very least, adequate.  That is where the pressure comes in.  People expect you to do adequate.

Should the game change to the point of final fantasy, to make it so people can over power it to remove the high pressure of being adequate?

I do not think that is a viable option.  This is not the type of a game that can let people choose their own difficulty level like that.  It is not a single player game.  You do not have the option of looking at outside information or not like you do in single player games, you have to look at it.  It is part of the game.

I think blizzard should add the information on their main page.  They should have a link on the skills page that will open in a browser that shows people their rotation and priority.  They still treat the game as if it is all one big secret and only the people that want to really know should know.  As if they are hiding the location of the holy grail or something.  Perhaps it is their desire to not tell people the best way to do things because then their whole talent tree thing or collection of skills you will never use are useless and it makes it seem like there are even less options in game.  Something anyone that reads those guides already knows anyway.

This is not the type of game where buying the brady guide is optional.  Everyone should buy it.  Everyone should read it.  Everyone should have instant access to it at all times.  They should not leave it up to people that do not read to figure out which abilities tanks should use to mitigate the damage they take.  They should not leave it up to people that do not read to figure out which heals proc buffs that will help them with their next heal and which are huge cooldowns they should save for big damage moments.  They should not leave it up to people that do not read to figure out in what order people should hit their skills to get the maximum DPS out of their characters.

There is already enough in game they leave up to the people.  They leave the ability to grind gear to the people.  They leave the ability to choose role up to the people.  They leave the ability to follow mechanics up to the people.  They leave the ability to get out of the fire up to the people.  They leave so much up to the people that all has a huge impact on whether they are adequate or not, and all those things they can not influence.  They should make every effort they can to influence the one area they can, abilities and how they work and when to use them.

That one little thing is what separated me on my shaman from some of those horrible players I saw when I ran.  Like I said, someone with more skill could have done leaps and bounds better than I did in my gear but I read my rotation and attempted my best to follow it and those damage dealers in better gear that I was doubling and tripling did not.

Just a little reading made the difference.  If they had done so those runs, which were not bad mind you, would have been so much faster and so much easier, if they had just spent a few minutes out of their game time to look up a rotation and make an effort to emulate it.

Your skills, what they do, when you use them and in which order they work best is the easiest part of the game.  It is easier than mastering mechanics, it is easier than working as a team, it is easier than finding a team, it is easier than reacting to random elements and it is even easier that moving out of the fire but only if you read how to use those skills.

So why is the easiest part of the game the hardest part for the majority of players?  It is the difference between doing poorly and doing adequately.  Is it really that hard to check out an article or two outside of the game for some information.

Is reading and comprehending what you are reading the high pressure of being adequate?

Monday Random Thoughts

- It looks like I have to admit I was wrong about something in my random thoughts today.

- Wrong about how long it would take for things to start settling down in the brawlers club.

- I said it would take about 3 months to get to a reasonable wait time but it seems at the rate people are losing interest it will be closer to 3 weeks, if that.

- People seem to have a really short attention span.

- Or they all got fed up with waiting and are going to come back to it later, like I plan to do.

- I have my ticket but have still not fought.

- A guild mate got one killing one of the rares and is already rank 2 after just 3 hours waiting.

- He lost once on the 4th boss so he got 5 battles in 3 hours.

- A lot better than the 2 battles in 3 hours each that first and second day.

- Another guild mate spent all day there, something like 14 hours and has made it to rank 4.

- He ended up with about 16 battles in 14 hours which means the wait time in both cases in now less than a hour.

- So I was wrong, in a couple of weeks at this rate we might get down to a reasonable 5-10 minute wait time.

- But blizzard will just start throwing more realms together if that happens.

- Can't believe their intention is to make people wait.

- I want to know what the hell they are smoking over there.

- Pet battle achievements seem to be broken in new places this week.

- Seems like they fixed a few of the bugs but now there are different ones.

- I finally got my 400th, and 401st for that matter, pet and did not get the achievement.

- The game says I have no pets.

- Don't tell my 401 unique pets that, it will make them feel unloved and they might run away.

- Soloed all the old raids and only got one of the raid pets to drop.

- For my luck that is good.

- A friend on my server got all but one of them just running them all once.

- I would love just for one expansion to experience that type of luck.

- Got another character to 90.

- Was waiting until 5.1 to level anyone else again because I wanted that reputation boost.

- The brand new 90 is now over 13,000 into revered with the klaxxi.

- If I do dailies for 3 days I will be exalted.

- Wow, that is a little too fast.

- Then again, I wish the lotus were that fast.

- I just can not bring myself to do them.

- I can do all the other dailies all day long on all my characters no problem but I just dislike them with a passion.

- Sucks I have to do them to open the other two reputations.

- I think it is time they remove that requirement as well.

- They added it to lower the feel people would have to do everything once they reached 90, that time has past, they can lose it now.

- Lets face it, anyone that was the type they would feel the need they had to do everything is 90 already and exalted with everything already.

- There is no need to gate that to slow people down so they do not burn themselves out any more.

- If it takes someone 2 months to get to 90 they are not exactly the type that is the do everything type or they would have been 90 a long time ago.

- I have people in my guild that play one day a week and already have 2 90s.

- If they can level that quickly I don't think you have to worry about someone hitting 90 and stressing they have to do everything now.

- They only play 1 day a week, give them some reputation relief.

- Do you know how long it will take to max reputation for these people if they only play one day a week.

- They are not the type to rush it, as their play shows, but there is a difference between limited play and limited desire to advance.

- They will never see themselves advance reputation wise playing one day a week.

- Not everyone plays daily or almost daily.

- Most don't actually.

- I know, shocking right?

- Speaking of my new 90 I decided to do some dungeons with her, to get healing gear, but without any healing gear to start with I went as DPS.

- Beauty is that as long as there is not a shaman healer in the group I can roll on all the healing gear without anyone screaming ninja.

- The one random I got with a shaman healer I whispered them saying healing was my main spec but I would not roll need on anything they needed, to please let me know if they do not need a healing piece that drops so I could need on it.

- See, it is not hard to be a decent person is it?

- Seems like for most of the player base they would go into convulsions if they did something that nice.

- Either way, playing enhancement for dungeons for the first time since hitting cap in cataclysm and doing it for more than just one dungeon here or there for the first time since wrath, I did not do so badly.

- In pure quest gear, nothing crafted outside of the engineer trinket, I had a 441 item level.

- I was pulling between 25K-35K on bosses but I am still having issues with the enhancement AoE rotation.

- If you have never played enhancement and you want to get rid of some extra hair, try learning their AoE rotation and doing it well.

- You will end up ripping most of it out.

- They can do some serious numbers but it is not as easy as swipe, swipe, swipe, or explosive trap, multi shot, multi shot, multi shot.

- I did get over 70K on one trash pack but I must have lucked into doing something right because trust me, I have no clue how I managed it.

- I know how to do it, I try to do it, it is just not easy.

- I blame tab targeting for it being so hard.

- 7 Mobs in front of me it will bounce between the same two over and over and if it does bounce to a third the third will be in a different room.

- They desperately need to fix tab targeting.

- I ran into DPS doing 10K on fights in there.

- I ran into DPS doing 8K on fights in there.

- I ran into DPS after DPS that could not fight their way out of a paper bag.

- One of my guild mates who was running with me said, it is because they are all in PvP gear.

- I educated them that PvP gear item level is the same as PvE item level now.

- All that 450 gear is better than what I am wearing, much better.

- They said, okay so maybe they are not wrong for wearing PvP gear, but if they are in better gear than you they are still doing horrible. You should not be doubling them up.

- I won't deny that.

- After my friend made a comment in party the offender said it was all they had and they know it is not great gear but they are trying to gear up.

- I said, Noxxic.com

- They said what?

- I said, it is where I went to check things out before entering the queue for a random and I just hit 90 less than 12 hours ago and have worse gear than you and am a healer, not a DPS on this character, and I am tripling you.

- Seriously, people just need to spend 10 minutes reading and I bet it would double the average persons DPS.

- Then again, doubling 8K would be 16K and would still be bad for a fresh 90.

- I know I sound like a broken record but there really is no excuse to be doing that poorly.

- None what so ever.

- I do not mind people not doing well, but there is a difference between not doing well and not even trying.

- I have zero patience for people that do not even try.

- I did not get any DPS gear but I did get a few healing pieces.

- So after a few dungeons, the crafted chest and gloves from leatherworking, the crafted shield and axe from blacksmithing and a couple of drops and duplicate quest items I did not need for DPS I almost have a full set of healing gear already.

- My healing set is already 456, just 4 from the LFR while my DPS set is still at 441.

- Doesn't bother me much, I will run LFR as a healer anyway.

- I have 2 healing slots missing gear at the moment.

- Neither can be filled with justice gear so I need to fill them another way.

- Ideal way would be to get into a sha group, which I might be able to do on tuesday, and get the boots, which is one of the slots I am missing healing gear on.

- Those boots, craft myself some 450 shoulders, and I will have a full healing set and quite possibly a 460 item level.

- Oddly enough, they finally fixed reputation and I am 4 item levels away from basically being able to skip valor gear all together if I so wished.

- We all know that healers can easily get into pugs so I would be getting 496 real gear instead of 489 valor gear if I so choose to go that route.

- Makes you wonder even more so, if valor gear can become irrelevant so quickly why gate it like they do?

- I can see gating good stuff, I can see gating required stuff, but gating stuff that is just a quality of life thing like valor gear makes no sense.

- Even more so when the valor gear is so massively inferior to raid gear.

- If they are going to gate it, it should at least be equal to raid gear.

- I am liking the new daily hub so far.

- I wish I could kill my own factions rares.

- I got the achievement  I'm in your base killing your dudes, I want to get one that says I'm in my base killing my dudes so you can't kill my dudes.

- They seem to not last long at all when they spawn, everyone looking for those free brawlers guild tickets.

- Someone in my guild got one.

- I am honored with them now, revered with the black prince now, got a fair deal of honor and enough of those tokens to basically buy whatever I want almost.

- And to think the dailies just started.

- I am really liking the flow they are moving at so far.

- It is better that the quest mobs do not scream for help from the PvP guards any more.

- I had seen some many flagged people running out and knew exactly why they were doing that.

- It happened to me too, but I was quick enough to realize what happened and make it out without getting flagged.

- It was interesting that when my pet attacked one of them it did not flag me however.

- Probably a bug, hunter pets have had a lot of bugs since the patch.

- Growl was broken, it would fire off when you first pull something and then never go off again even if you manually clicked it.

- They had a server restart this weekend and it seems to have fixed that problem.

- Might explain why all those hunters in the brawlers club had such an issue with aggro.

- I knew that it was impossible that not even one hunter that knew how to turn growl on was in there.

- It was not just growl that was broken.

- I think their threat generation was broken completely.

- With the growl not working and MDing over and over, and being BM where my pet is doing more damage, and holding back on mine, I will still pulling off my pet all the time after the patch.

- Seems most of that was fixed by the restart.

- The pets being squishy however was not.

- My pet just is not in the groove lately.

- He used to be able to take on 10+ mobs no problem.

- The other day he died to 4, with mend pet rolling constantly, I just could not keep up.

- Have to watch what I pull.

- Not used to that when questing as a hunter.

- That is one of the reasons questing as a hunter rocks, no down time, just keep pulling and keep killing.

- I can't say for sure if my pet is still squishy after the restart because I only did the new dailies with him since then, but he did seem to be getting hurt a little more often.

- I hate that they changed macros so that I can not tie dire beast into my arcane and cobra shots any more.

- I understand the change, I just dislike it.

- I kind of liked the set it and forget it nature of it for while out questing or doing dungeons.

- I wish I could tie more in like that.

- When doing serious raiding, which I have not been able to do on my hunter yet as I have been taking, it is a DPS loss, but for questing and randoms and LFR the minor loss is acceptable to do that style of content.

- A 500 DPS loss when you are doing 70K really isn't all that large.

- Some might even say in serious raiding a loss like that, if it makes you more fluid over all, is acceptable.

- I noticed that I actually had stopped using the macro for the most part and started hitting it myself as I became more and more comfortable with all our buttons.

- Way to many buttons, wish they would lose at least 2 of the rotation ones.

- Give us a replacement for dire beast and lynx rush that are passives that do the same damage.

- Leave us with just stampede, toss/barrage and readiness as added buttons.

- Adding 5 new buttons to a rotation in one expansion was extremely excessive if you ask me.

- And there are classes that could use more buttons that did not get them.

- Like my shaman for example.

- So many parts of my enhancement rotation I can't even use while questing as it could end up dragging more mobs.

- Amazing how a class that has such a difficult AoE rotation has so much stuff that does AoE as part of its max DPS rotation even on single target.

- This means if I do not use those AoE type things while questing I spend half of every battle just waiting for things to come off cooldown.

- Not exactly a fun rotation.

- Hit four things, wait for something to pop up, hit one, watch a few seconds again, hit two, wait a few seconds again.

- Would be nice if they added another weak single target ability, something you would not use in raiding, but something you can spam during those waiting time when you do not feel like doing those AoE things knowing they will drag more mobs in.

- Heck, maybe there is already something they have and it has just been so longed since I leveled a new shaman I forgot about it.

- Primal strike maybe?  As I am writing this I think I remember that one being around.  I will try that.

- Do we still even have that?

- Tried that last tier spell but it seemed to eat my weapon procs so that was a no go.

- It did hit like a truck however, I might consider that one for raiding.

- But I doubt I would ever raid as enhancement.

- That is melee and you know my rule about melee.

- If you want to be that close to the boss roll a tank.

- There is no reason anyone else should ever be that close.

- Except a rogue, because they have no other choice.

- Perhaps that is why rogues are the class I dislike the most.

- I did not give in deep to my crack (pet battle) addiction this weekend.

- There was more to do being new content came out.

- But it is funny seeing people doing it.

- Was flying and saw this level 90 worgen just staring at the ground, you know in that way where it looks like it is looking down when standing still, and there was nothing there around them and they were in a place were you would never expect to see them.

- Yeap, pet battling.

- You could tell.

- Looked like some druggie just standing in middle of nowhere so no one could see him just staring down at the ground as he took a dose of that new drug called pet battles and felt the euphoria of a high.

- I am seeing more and more people, just standing in the middle of nowhere, just staring at the ground.

- Like zombies.

- The drug has taken control of them.

- Have a great day.

One Step Backwards: Brawlers

The sign of any good company is that they continue to move forward, develop, learn and get better.  Every company, even good ones, will occasionally make mistakes and take one step back however.  This is the situation I see blizzard in right now.  A successful company that seems to have forgotten their past.  What is that saying?  Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.

Doomed might not be the correct word for the quote or for what blizzard is doing with the brawlers guild because it is not something that could have been unseen.  It is an active desire to repeat the past on blizzards part and I am just left to wonder why.

Does anyone remember the bad old days when you needed to queue to play the game because your server was so packed you could not get on.  Sometimes it would just be a few minutes but sometimes it would be hours, if the horror stories I heard were indeed correct.  Luckily I have never had pleasure of experiencing that but thanks to blizzard I can experience it, in part anyway, if I wish to play a part of the game known as the brawlers guild.

Not content with the long lines on every server waiting to get in and fight blizzard in their infinite knowledge decided to make it a cross realm zone.  Lets forget for a moment that cross realm zones are probably the worst addition to the game ever from a PvE standpoint, it also means that an already long wait becomes even longer now.  Blizzard said, why have someone wait 30 minutes to do one fight when we can make them wait 3 hours.

Someone must have been reading the forums a little too much over at the blizzard office but not actually reading the posts.  They saw many people yearning for the days of vanilla and looking back with their rose tinted glasses about how great things were.  The problem is, they did not read what people said they liked about that time and said to themselves, self, they loved those long waits to play, lets give it back to them.

So not only do they add something to the game that requires a wait to play aspect but they cross realm it to make that wait 10 times longer.  Not exactly a step forward I would say.  If you ask a million people that remember those times what they thought about queue time to play I am willing to be all one million of them would say they hate it.  So why bring something back to the game that is basically making you wait to play in game instead of waiting to play to get into the game.  Sure, at least people can use chat now while they are waiting, so perhaps it is better than waiting on the outside looking in but just marginally better at best.

One of my guild mates spent 6 hours there over the last 2 days, waiting, and has fought only two fights.  Last night he gave up after standing there waiting for three hours to get in and do one fight.  Three hours standing there to do nothing, is this what they call good game design now?

I am not being my normal grumpy self here, I am not being a naysayer here, I am asking a serious question I would love to see answered with something other than the standard "it is not required you do it" bull shit response.

Who at blizzard thought this was a good idea and why?

I would really love to hear that answered.  Did they really think it would play out any differently then people are seeing and did see and complain about on the PTR.  Did they really think that once it hit live everything would be fine.  Like the problems on the PTR were not really problems.  Just like all the people that reported crashes and other problems with the CRZ and instead of fixing them they just released it as if don't worry, when it hits the masses it will fix itself.  Why even test things if you are not going to listen to the testers?

Why did they take the worst part of vanilla, waiting to play, and bring it back to the game.  The thing is, and I am sure no one could have thought it possible, but they made it worse.  Instead of waiting to play on the outside, you now need to wait to play on the inside.  This means you wait at the ring listening to all these people and most of them from different realms at that.

People have a hard enough time being decent to people they see on their own server there is no way in hell they will be decent to people on other servers.  Seeing people on other servers makes them hostile the second they see them.  I saw at least 100 get off my server comments last night, of course they were in a bit more colorful language than that.  I wish blizzard would notice that people do not like this CRZ stuff and remove it or at the very least remove it from this because in this it is bad for the community, very bad.

A few hours there, for no reason because I did not fight, last night showed me that this addition was the last thing this deteriorating community needed.  Grouping people up that have even less connection to each other and allowing them to insult and abuse other players without any possible repercussions on their community reputation was a stroke of stupidity that I would have not even thought possible if you had let a dust mite design this game.

Lets look at the design here.  Make people wait, meaning they will get frustrated and bored from waiting.  Add to that the continued down turn in the community and how people act to each other.  Then let those people get all packed together with other communities removing even the small boundary that might have had a chance of keeping things civil out of fear of community retaliation because now they can take their frustrations out on someone elses community and guess what you have?  The worst idea blizzard has ever come up with.

Someone said in a response the other day that I can not blame blizzard for the community being the way it is.  I say to them, yes I can.

Blizzard created this situation, they threw random people together and gave them a reason to be angry and upset and then gave them something where they can take it out on each other by adding a competitive aspect to it where people can insult each other without any fear of ban or repercussions.  Yes, I can blame blizzard for the down turn in the community and yes, I am completely right to blame them.  They made this on purpose, they knew what would happen, they did not care, some people like to watch the world burn.

Waiting 3 hours to log on to play was not acceptable back in the day.  Waiting 3 hours to get in a fight that only lasts a minute at best is not acceptable now.  Waiting 3 hours with those drooling half wits insulting each other in chat for no good reason other than they are bored and frustrated is not acceptable either.

People play to play, they do not pay to wait, and they sure as hell to not pay to be verbally abused in game.

When I first thought about this and complained about this I was hoping it would not be as bad as I was making it out to be and it turned out worse because blizzard made it cross realm.  WTF were they thinking?  Make the waits longer and let people stand around and insult others from different realms for even more time?

I swear the amount of stupid connected to this addition is incomprehensible.  I understand that to move forward we sometimes need to take a step back but this is not a step back at all, it is a step forward in the wrong direction, a huge step forward in the wrong direction.

The waiting factor was a step back but gathering massive amounts of people and giving them a venue to spew all their hatred at other people is... unspeakable.  I can not even use the words I want to use about that.

I need to step away from the ring because the more I think about the things I heard people saying to the fighters and each other the more it makes me wish I were a GM because there would be a hell of a lot of banned people.  The things I want to say about that would be better saved for things that come out of my mouth while watching a football game with my buddies and not used here.  See, there is a time and a place for acting like a neanderthal and in a game is not the time or place but watching football with buddies seems more appropriate.

Lets move to the beginning and where you get your invitation.  The black market auction house, or in other words, the addition that proves blizzard actively supports gold buying.

They added the blood soaked invitations as a way to keep things from getting too crowded and then made it cross realm zone to fill it up.

Excuse me?

Did I skip that day at logic school where you do not want things crowed but you make efforts to make it crowded because you don't want it crowded?

Blizzard has been at the front of MMORPG game designing for a long time, they add so many things so often that show everyone else how things should be done, but don't fool yourself, one of the thing other games look at is what fails for blizzard so they can try not to repeat the mistake made by them and this will be hotly discussed at designer tables for a while.  Perhaps on how not to design things or perhaps on how to make it better.

The brawlers club is a great idea and could have a great addition to the game but blizzard dropped the ball, not once (in making people wait to play), not twice (by putting people in an abusive environment), not three times (by supporting gold buying if people want to get into it and can't afford it) but four times (by making it cross realm zone).

Will it get better?  Yes.  As time passes and the novelty wears off to people that just wanted to test it out and others get as far as they want to go in it.  Like myself, once I get all the achievements I will never return.  It will get better, with time.  But the community watching and insulting people win or lose will always make it a horrible environment to be in, that will not get better.

Could it have been made better?  Absolutely.  They could have added a long quest line with challenges appropriate to the types of challenges you would get in the ring instead of charging for entry on the auction market and enticing people to buy gold.  If they wanted to charge a vendor that sells tickets at a set number would have been more appropriate.  They could have added a public or private option to fight so you could just fight all the fights alone if you want to practice or just get the achievements as fast as possible or fight with everyone to see for a chance at extra prizes or something.  They could have added more to do there while waiting and watching.  They could have added more achievements for watching if they wanted people to hang out more instead of creating a long line that people needed to wait in.  There is a lot they could have done to make it better.

In my opinion, when it comes to design, the brawlers guild is one huge step backwards.

I thought those nightmare stories of waiting hours to play even solo content were over, but blizzard bought it back big time.  They added solo play that you have to wait hours to do.

So much for a company that has been worried about getting people out in the world for years.  They made something that not only keeps you from getting out in the world, but keeps you from going out in the world for many hours instead of the few minutes it should.

Many will just write it off as saying if you don't like it don't do it, it is optional content, and they are right.  But if you want to do it you will see it for what it really is, horrible design and a huge step backwards.  Optional content or not, bad design is bad design and the brawlers club is bad design.

If you are after the achievements I have a suggestion for you.  Wait.

If you wait you will have shorter lines, even with cross realm.  Fewer people watching which means less bile filled comments being thrown around as there are fewer people and that means fewer comments and fewer reasons for them to act like jerks because there is not a large captive audience they feel they need to impress with with witty ability to make asses of themselves.

Just hang back and wait if you want achievements.  That is how this new addition to the game should be play, by waiting.  Wait 3 hours or wait 3 months.

The brawlers guild has changed the world of warcraft into the world of waitcraft.

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.