I have entered and come out of the other side on the grind to level 90. After finally making it through level 89 (dear god, this level was far too long) and hitting 90 I felt relieved to be finished. That is until I went to purchase my ability to fly and was assaulted with all of the quests. Only to learn that in addition to the quests there were more quests, in other places, to partake in. I was immediately overwhelmed and exhausted. I didn’t know where to start, what to do, or why the hell there were so many daily quests to begin with.
Yet, as I knew I needed to, I made room in my quest long and started on my way. Opting not to do the mount or the lore walker quests, I had daily quests for the Klaxxi, the Pandas, Cooking and Fishing. I easily obtained the achievement to do 25 daily quests in a single day, and then continued to have more to do. Each day after I hit 90 I spent 90 minutes to two hours taking care of daily quests. I quickly realized that it was going to become a huge burden to complete all of these quests every day once I went back to work and we started raiding again – and I imagine that it’s going to also involve me staying up later than I should just to make sure they are completed every day. The fact that it’s several hubs of dailys and so many dailys each day only makes it worse.
Every day I dread the daily grind. It is one of the first things I do, because I know that if I don’t I will find ways to avoid doing it. It is tedious, it is boring, it is frustrating…and for a progression raider it is required. I hate that rep grinds are tied to it. I hate that Valor Points are tied to it. I hate that I feel obligated to spend time doing things that I generally do not enjoy and make me miserable when I would rather be doing things I find fun (instancing, pet battles, hell – even fishing!). I stated more than once over the past few days that I felt dailys would be the end of WoW for me – I don’t enjoy them and there are just so many to be done. It’s overwhelming and time consuming and I can’t help feeling that Blizzard went overboard with them.
I’m sure the argument that some of you will make is that it is supposed to be an alternate progression path for those who don’t raid. And perhaps I’d agree with that…if so much wasn’t tied to reputation that you can only gain through those dailys. Crafting patterns, Justice Point Gear (that is almost obsolete by the time you can even buy it and use it), Valor Point Gear. Everything is tied to reputation. And reputation is tied to dailys (and you have to have the reputation to open up even more dailys for different reputation). I hate dailys. I would grind instances until my fingers bleed and enjoy most of it, partly because it’s something I already have to do and partly because I enjoy instances, but it’s a progression path I mostly enjoy. I don’t get that option. Instead I have to go, every day, and do quests. Quests that everyone else is doing, so there is competition for mobs. Quests that I will do 100 times before I’m finished. Quests that offer so little reputation that I dread the length of time I have to suffer through them. Quests that become a chore and make me hate the game for the time I have to spend doing them.
And there are so many of them.
I’m not entirely sure why the decision was made to tie gear and reputation to this method but I have yet to find a single person who has indicated that they are enjoying the current system. Each day I log in and joke that it’s time to play “World of Dailycraft” – which is honestly what the game feels like at times. And I don’t think it is a good thing for anyone involved. There are so many fun things I’d rather be doing with the new expansion – it’s really a shame that all of those things are overshadowed by this aspect of the game. That the time I could be spending enjoying the new instance content or capturing new pets is spent doing something that makes me hate playing.
I’ll save the cooking rant for another day.
Maybe if I didn’t have a million dailys to do, I could go and enjoy ones for things I might actually enjoy: Lorewalkers or Cloud Serpent. But there isn’t enough time in my day for tertiary, fun things like that. All because I have too many “mandatory” dailys. Too many chores to complete before I can go outside and play. For now, let’s just suffice it to say that dailys are an unfun experience. They do not enhance my game play. They don’t make me think “I can’t wait to get home and play!”.
Falling Leaves and Wings 
And yet, for me, I would have done daily after daily after daily during Cataclysm, yet instead was forced to endlessly run instances. I didn’t get the option.
Different strokes, as they say.
Sure, that’s fine. But then why not have both options?
This, for me, is why I won’t be high on progression this tier. I can’t do dailies. They’re going to end up being occasionalies just like the Tol Barad quests were. So I won’t have the best of the best for raiding and that’s a trade-off I’m perfectly willing to accept. All this has brought into focus why I play: for enjoyment. I play for the fun of playing and HM raiding can be that but I’m not willing to slog through a stream of unfun to get there. Progression raiding isn’t important enough to sacrifice the main payoff I get from WoW.
I’m slowly, but most likely surely, getting to that point myself!
Honestly, you can substitute cash for Tiller’s rep (just buy all the cooking ingredients) and you only need do Angler’s for slightly faster fishing skill-ups. You could still skill-up fishing the old fashioned way if you wanted to. If you have level 85 alts, do the intro quest to get to Pandaria then run them out to Halfhill and get them started on their own farms, and that’s 4 plots a day per alt that you can plant as extra food production. Or if you’ve got a buddy who’s a warlock, set up a closet and summon everyone’s alts, skip the tedious journey.
Klaaxi and Golden Lotus will let you buy raid gear at Revered, at which point you can stop. Klaaxi will take just under 2 weeks to get Revered if you’re in a level 25 guild and finish the other quests in the zone, then you can drop them.
And if your guild is good enough to clear Mogu’shan and start on heroics in the first couple weeks then any faction beyond Golden Lotus will rapidly become nice-to-have fill in the random slots, rather than mandatory.
Can you get the farming quest at level 85?
Regardless of how long the take, the fact that there are so manynof them and that they need to be done is the issue.
For gearing up fast to do raids, I’m actually recommending getting the gear you need for heroics (the pvp blues work okay for slots you didn’t get quest items) and then just grinding gear from heroics. There are some things out of the skirmishes, though you don’t really need them if you can get guild runs for chaining 5-mans.
I have almost a full set of gear from heroics. And I will be upgrading with rep gear as long as it continues to be viable,
Grind your golden lotus rep, but mostly you can say screw the rest and do them more slowly.
The 450 pvp gear is itemized almost the same as the 450 jp gear. The heroic dungeons give 463. Looking at my lists, the valor gear is usually below raid drops in desirability. Go grind your dungeons and have fun. Then grind your raids and have fun.
Do run Direbrew for a trinket. I find the heroic dungeons, not a joke, but simple enough to heal in 450ish gear. The monastery kicks my arse, but the rest is pretty easy. Just bring loads of milk or a pet mage.
It’ll be at least 2 weeks to get golden lotus to revered. Off the cuff without bothering with pesky numbers or reality, it’ll be 6 weeks-ish to get most of the reps to exalted. How many of those pieces will you want in 6-8 weeks? Yes, being able to fill in empty spots is important. Is it blow up your wrist and ruin your fun important?
The Direbrew trinket is actually worse than the trinkets from heroics because it doesn’t offer any mana returns.
In all honesty, gear upgrade now, during progression, are much more important than gear upgrades once you’ve finished clearing content. And it doesn’t matter where those upgrades are from 🙂
Same problem with me, they do mix them up a bit so its not always the same but still its like groundhog day, one big problem i do see is its easy for tanks to do runs and get gear, most in my guild are full 463 allready, this will stop tanks from using runs to get gear, even now as a healer i can have 8mins wait this was unheard off before.
Also heroics are to easy, i can on some bosses not heal at all, some bosses are killed in less then 30secs its a joke. and boring as hell, there is no grinding rep to get gear for heroics, you jump stright in at 90
With Valor being given for dailys and the amount rep needed, once people are geared they will never set foot in heroics again. you are allready seeing Dungeon jumoing going on.
All in all i dont like the new system i really think blizzard messed up , yes i know i raced to 90 , but what off my alts? there is no way on hell iam doing all the dailys on all my alts, even now iam thinking of stopping playing, it all rests on raids hope they did not mess them up
“Also heroics are to easy, i can on some bosses not heal at all, some bosses are killed in less then 30secs its a joke. and boring as hell, there is no grinding rep to get gear for heroics, you jump stright in at 90 ”
Blizzard stated months ago that Heroics are simply level 90 versions of leveling dungeons. They’re not supposed to be a massive pain in the ass like Cataclysm Heroics. They’re intended as simply another step in gearing up for raiding at this point, not an actual challenge. With the advent of the Dungeon Finder back in Wrath, Cata proved pretty effectively that mixing in Heroics (as they were) as a required part of the progression route was no viable for most people in conjunction with most people. Remember back to the first few weeks of Wrath. Trying to run Heroics, especially as a healer, was an absolute nightmare, even when properly geared, thanks to a combination of factors (Lack of organization in a PUG, DPS or god forbid tanks sneaking in under-geared).
Challenge Modes have effectively replaced what we knew as Heroics. If you want to be presented with a tougher dungeoning experience, go there.
Heroics are not meant to be overly challenging for those comfortable with a higher level of play. That is what challenge modes were introduced to supplement. However, I do agree that the way heroics and dailys tied VP together, is unfortuante.
Yup, the amount if stuff to do makes my head spin. I have been cutting sleep short etc just so I could make it to 90 and get geared before raiding starts (tomorrow) and I have not had time off work to do any of it – except for one sick day.
Sadly I didn’t realise there was a tabard that could get me panda rep until just last night, so all my dungeon grinding I could have been getting rep… I nearly cried.
I think that is my biggest problem, there is just SO much that needs to be done.
There are a million dailies. Maybe I’m a bad raider, but I refuse to do anything in game that makes me dread playing the game. It makes my free time much more enjoyable. I do some dailies here and there when I feel like it, and as a completionist I will get exalted with all factions eventually, but I don’t force myself to do everything every day.
I guess I’m just stubborn. I want gear from bosses I kill, not dailies.
I envy you in that regard.
I definitely feel like I need to do them and get them finished, at least to gear levels. Once I’ve unlocked the gear, I think I will probably take a break and randomly do them to get them to exalted, but I definitely won’t do them daily.
I hear you so much. I despise dailies, but the min-maxer in me feels bad if I shirk working to get improvements to make my performance better in raids. So I’m screwed if I do and screwed if I don’t.
And they removed the daily cap so that you feel obligated to do every…single..stinking daily every single day.
It’s like Blizzard’s ultimate answer to forcing their concurrent user count to stay up without having to produce as much content. Just thinking about it makes me cross.
I know exactly what you mean. I also feel obligated to take care of all of the dailys every day. I have, however, shirked a bit on the fishing ones when I don’t have time.
At least they are hotfixing out the rep requirement for JP gear.
Unfortunately, for a lot of people (myself included) its too late 😦
The good news is they removed the rep requirements to buy justice gear this evening. There was jack diddly crap in the way of crafted leather int gear on my server’s AH and I didn’t quest much in Wastes so my ilvl was was 432 and it was looking like a long, dry, miserable, resentful grind to get the rep needed to buy JP gear. I was very tired of questing from leveling and was looking forward to the heroics so yeah, I was really happy to hear about the rep requirement change tonight.
I wish they hadn’t done away with rep grinding in dungeons. We should have more choices because different people prefer different options
It is good with the JP change – but was a little late for people who were pushing to be raid ready by Tuesday 😦
I join you here. I *HATE* (repeat HATE HATE HATE) reputation grinds. And HATE even more because if I ever want to use any of my crafting alts, I will be forced to go through the same reputation grind (which I may already have said that I HATE).
I don’t understand why Blizzard went back 4 years in game design: the strong point of WoW was the strict separation of activities: you need gear to run instances: you can get them running instances. You need PvP gear: you get it doing PvP. You need reputation deco items: you get it grinding reputation. Now the whole VP fiasco means that I’ll have to grind *four* reputations in order to fill any “unlucky” slot which is not served by a raid drop. Damn, it would be like saying that in order to buy conquest PvP gear you need a level 25 battle pet! What’s the relation?
So this is what I have decided:
– daily quests: I do the ones which I like (precious few of them), and then I do a single reputation per day. If this costs me a raid spot, then be it.
– alts: no leveling of alts, unless I can transfer my reputation gains from my main. I’ll spend the time playing other MMOs instead of re-grinding a reputation for 28-slot bags or other stuff.
– if the next expansion pulls the same shit, I’m out of here. Sorry dear Blizzard devs, I play for fun, if I wanted a second job I’d be on Eve.
I can commiserate with you on thenalt front. I left Cataclysm with 10 85s. And I am already considering if I will level any of them this expansion. I might, but I strongly suspect I won’t level as many, and I’ll do it much slower.
I loved the tabards in Cata. It was like ‘set and forget’ until you got the message you hit exalted. I hate questing (I enjoy some of the storylines, but I just simply don’t enjoy questing for more than about an hour) and I’m already not really enjoying trying to get my main to 90 (I enjoy dungeons but I don’t want to grind dungeons to 90 because then I’ll end up hating them) and hitting 90 only to have a ton of rep grinds waiting… Meh. Luckily I do enjoy other parts of the game a lot, but yeah it would be great if they could give you the option to get rep in several different ways. Or like a compromise, instead of ezmode tabards, daily quests that take place in dungeons.
I think multiple ways to grind out faction would be beneficial for everyone!
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The only reason I resented the daily grind is because I felt like I wasn’t using skills that would benefit me in a raiding environment. At least when I’m grinding Heroics for gear or when I’m slapping on a tabard and running 5m, I’m healing. I’m learning how to be a better healer. I’m keeping those muscles strong, so to speak, and I’m getting better at my craft which will benefit me in the long run.
I don’t see how being in my burning hot mess of a shadow spec and facerolling Mind Blast day after day is going to keep me strong as a healer, other than by giving me the rep and/or gear that I need. It just felt like it was pulling me in different directions and I didn’t care for that.
I feel you with the off spec bit. It is pretty miserable 😦
I could not possibly agree with you more. Sad, in that I love so many things they put into MoP, but the daily grind will probably break me. I expect by the end of week three I will reach a point of disgust I can’t turn back from. I love most of the class chnages, the new instances, all the new things to do like pet battles. I would even love to pick and choose a faction or two to grind at my own pace to get the cool mounts and tabards. My disgust heightens when blue posts talk about how all of this is optional. I wish. Remove progression gear and recipes from the dailies, leave the rewards fun and cosmetic like mounts. People will still do them, but they can pace themselves in a more healthy and fun way. Right now, this is the start of the end of WoW for me.
I wondered frequently if I was just “getting too old” for all of this 🙂
But I feel quite similarly that I’m not really sure how much more I can take.
Couldn’t help but share the news, Bliz has seen fit to remove the rep grind from the JP gear. That’s must clear up some of your dailies.
Happy hunting
Not really, unfortunately. JP were already useless because after 1 week of random heroics I already had better stuff in all slots except two, which were illv440…. The big problem is that in order to make any use of the VP I’m gaining I still need to grind reputations.
And I’ve decided I won’t do it. I’m about to post on my guild forum that I’ll stop rep grinding and accept the consequence of losing a raid spot.
Unfortunately, this is about a week too late, I already have gear that surpasses what is available.
This is exactly how I feel. EXACTLY! As a priest who raids with in disc/holy spec, I find this terribly painful. And not fun. I find myself grumpy every time I log into wow. And, I used to love leveling alts. Not anymore. The thought of having to repeat this to get alts ready to raid makes me run screaming from the game. That, combined with the horror that is healing on a priest may well drive me from the game.
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