Reputation Expectation

I wrote a few days ago, in my Guide to Reputation, all the ways to get reputation with various factions. There are a few ways I'd like to see paths to reputation changed and enhanced in WotLK. First, I'll review each of the ways currently in game (very briefly) and write a bit about how they should evolve in Wrath and then I'll discuss a couple new ways I've brainstormed on how to get faction.

Faction Gain Methods - Previously used
Killing Mobs - this is obviously a good method for rep gains. As this is one of the most accessible paths to reputation, it need to stay and be relevant. I'd like to see this at a level that currently exists in the game. Keep up the good work, Blizzard.

Completing Normal Quests- Another awesome method for rep gains. For at least the Aldor/Scryer quests, the quest text had a notice of what faction you were gaining. This would be a nice addition to quest text for ALL reputation rewarding quests. Again, I think this frequency is about right and should stay constant.

Completing Repeatable Quests- Again, not a bad method for rep gains. The only downside here is continually running back to the quest giver to turn-in and get another version of the quest. I might even enjoy a few more of these.

Completing Daily Quests- This seems to be the direction Blizzard has moved. For my tastes there are too many and they're too static. The cooking and fishing quests at least have a chance of randomization from day-to-day, but I know I've caught Zangarmarsh shrimps many times in one week. MORE randomization for those quests would be awesome as well as some randomization for any daily quest.

Turning in Bound Items- this is obviously a good method for rep gains. As this is one of the most accessible paths to reputation, it need to stay and be relevant. I'd like to see this at a level that currently exists in the game. Keep up the good work, Blizzard.

Turning in Unbound Items- Nice method for reputation gain and a nice way to make some cash if you've already outrepped it. However, please Blizzard make some way to turn in multiple instantiations of quests. I spent a good portion of time turning in Incendosaur Scales to the Thorium Brotherhood (and other items to the Scryers, come to think of it). And I'd really like to have that time back.

Turning in Crafted Items- This one really is a disguised "pay cash" version. Unless every trade has something to turn in, it gets to be expensive. The positives are it can reward crafts who don't have as many "marketable" items and gives a place to dispose of unwanted duplicates as a craft is leveled.

Pay Cash- This one is risky. Without awesome gold sinks in the game, it can quickly get to easy to rep. Especially when I know someone who has 28,000 gold on their alt. While it's refreshing from a quest perspective, it would get very old very soon.


Brainstormed NEW Faction Gain Methods

Hidden Quests - It would be very cool to me to have quests that tracked what you had done and when you completed the heretofore unknown requirements, a quest giver would light up and allow you to do a turn in for gold, experience and some faction. What I'm talking about is, like if you kill 100 nagas in Zangarmarsh, the next time you hit Cenarion Refuge you get a quest turn in that wasn't available to you before. Stuff like that.

Time Sensitive Quests (either repeatable, daily or normal) - The idea of getting more reputation for completing a quest in a faster time is awesome. I'd love to get "double" rep if I could complete it in a short time. This method may not work for normal repeatable quests that involve turn-ins, but should work for others.

Mini-Instanced Quests - I'd love the idea of doing a solo or (very) small group quest that was instanced. Long ago in another MMO I played, door-missions adjusted to level and numbers of party members at entrance. The same could be done in WoW and would be a very cool style of reputation grind to do.

Well, that's it for me today. Everyone enjoy the weekend of raiding, PVP, questing, faction grinding and/or Midsummer Festival.

Guide to Reputation

Reputation has been in the game forever. Or at least as long as I can remember. And heretofore, Blizzard has come up with several very reliable ways for players to increase their reputation. I'd like to go over each of the ways and give examples both old and new. As a follow up, I'll post about some thoughts about how Blizzard can enhance reputation in the WotLK expansion.

Bonus: The clickable image above leads you to a reputation calculator website where you can check YOUR reputation.

Killing Things
This is perhaps the simplest in terms of recognizing it. Every time you kill a certain type of thing, your reputation is increased. In the "old world" every Molten Core boss you killed upped your Hydraxian Waterlords reputation. Likewise, killing any pirate in Stranglethorn Vale increases your Booty Bay reputation. And perhaps the greatest time sink in pre-BC was the Timbermaw.

In the Outland, you can see this mechanic at work in Nagrand and killing Ogres (for Kurenai/Mag'har reputation) or in Zangarmarsh as you kill Bog Giants and their ilk(for Sporregar reputation).

Killing things is a well-defined mechanism for increasing reputation and makes a lot of sense. This should definitely stay in.

Quests

Non-Daily non-repeatable Quests
These quests when turned in grant reputation usually with the faction of the quest giver and some sympathetic reputation with factions aligned with that faction. In other words, if you turn in a quest from a human, you will most likely get some Stormwind Reputation and some smaller amount of reputation from Ironforge, Gnomeregan, Darnassus and Exodar.

In the Outland these quests will be everywhere. Most stuff out there grants SOME kind of reputation.

Having some faction associated with a lot of the quests is a great idea. This scheme needs to not be overused though. If the only way to grind favor with any faction is killing, it loses its appeal.

Non-Daily repeatable Quests
The vast majority of these quests are actually turn-in quests more fully detailed below. As I wrack my brain, I cannot think of any of this type of quest still in the game. Back before the great Timbermaw Reputation Reformation, there used to be a quest like this. But it was removed in favor of a more rigorous method to achieve Timbermaw rep. The only one I can currently think of in game now is the collection of diminuation powder and watery cores (both Alliance quests on the Feralas shores.

The one I'm seeing in Outland is "Now that We're Friends/Now that We're Still Friends" quest in Zangarmarsh for the Sporregar.

These types of quests can be completed as many times in one day as you like but require you to have the quest before beginning the killing spree. This kind of quest is fun, and I'd honestly like to see more.

Daily, Repeatable Quests

The typical dailies. They can only be completed once per day. And they're generally the same thing every day. These didn't exist in pre-BC and not even when BC shipped. They were added via patch 2.2 (?) Some of the dailies vary day to day (the normal & heroic dungeon, the fishing, cooking and battleground daily all do).

These are good quests, but honestly, too many have no variation day to day.

Turn In Quests

Non-Soulbound items

These quests ask you to turn in a number of items that are BOE when dropped (or harvested). I think everyone of these is also a quest that is non-daily and repeatable. In general, the objects to complete the quest are gathered and the quest is turned in as a part of taking it.

Pre-BC has quite a few of these. Think of Dadanga (the kodo) at Marshall's Refuge in Un'Goro. She asks for 15 Bloodpetal sprouts. The goblins in Gadgetzhan also ask for Water Pouches in this manner. The Thorium Brotherhood uses this mechanism as do the Timbermaw. Also each of the five Azerothian factions (on each side) want cloth of all kinds from wool to runecloth to increase rep. The Darkmoon Faire also uses this mechanism.

In the Outlands, each of the factions seems to have something to turn in like this. Granted most of these turn ins will get you only to revered. But for instance, Cenarion Expedition wans Unidentified Plant Parts, Kurenai/Mag'har AND Consortium want Ogre Warbeads in Nagrand, Lower City wants Arakkoa feathers and so on.

These quests are also awesome for rep. And the items can be purchased ahead of time on the auction house.

Soulbound Items

Not many pre-BC factions use this method at all. In fact, the only one that springs to mind is the Argent Dawn's acceptance of soulbound scourgestones collected from Eastern & Western Plaguelands and the dungeons within them.

This trend continues to Outland where the Consortium who accepts both Zaxxis' Insignia and Ethereum Prisoner ID Tags.

Again, very good quests for rep and having the items be soulbound makes sure that only the character that actually puts in the work to farm these gets the reputation credit. Being soulbound, the turn in items can't be sold or traded.

Crafter Items

Both the Argent Dawn (through crafting writs) and Darkmoon Faire accept crafted items as reputation turn ins. The writs are actually fairly complex as you must turn in an Argent Dawn Token (from turning in scourgestones) to accept the crafting writ. However, once acquired the writs themselves are not bound and can be sold on the Auction House.

To the best of my knowledge, there are no crafted turn ins in the Outland.

This would be an awesome place for Blizzard to expand into. Having leveled many crafters, I know that at some point the stuff I'm making to level up is just being vendor sold or disenchanted. It would be awesome to have another place for those items to go.

Paying for Reputation

The only example of this that I can find was introduced with the Shattered Sun daily quests. While this quest is very worthwhile for the reputation, Blizzard has to be careful to not over-do it. Gold is freely available in the game now and allowing large sums of it to exit just for reputation might reverse some of Blizzard's actions against gold sellers.

So, that's reputation in a nutshell. Many different factions, each utilizing some blend of the above for advancing a players standing. Next time we'll look at what I'd like to see happen with reputation in the WotLK.

Exalted - Five Factions

I've made some fairly heady posts the past two days, and I thought I'd make a "hooray me" post today that's light and fluffy. I ran Karazhan last night filling a DPS slot in my old guild and was able to hit exalted. That's my fifth exalted faction on (what I used to consider) my alt.

The other factions I'm exalted with are: Scryers, Sha'Tar, Cenarion Expedition, and Sha'tari Skyguard. I'm pretty happy with it.

There are six more factions that I'm Revered with and working towards exalted:

• Honor Hold (20613/21000)
• Ogri'la (15745/21000)
• Consortium (3957/21000)
• Lower City (8337/21000)
• Shattered Sun Offensive (17327/21000)
• Keepers of Time (3961/21000)

I guess, both the Shattered Sun and Honor Hold are laughable. One run of any of the Hellfire instances in Heroic (or a normal Shattered Halls) should get me over the top. And I'm pretty sure the Shattered Sun can be done in a couple days of dailys. Maybe I'm just lazy.

Interlude - Now that you've dinged

BBB wrote today about how Mrs. BBB dinged 70 and feels there's nothing left to do solo anymore. Just to give a little insight into what I have done since dinging...

• Grind Consortium Reputation. You can choose to either kill ogres in Nagrand for their war beads which the Consortium guys are happy to take or kill the Ethereal dudes just south of Area 52 in Netherstorm.
• Finish quests. If the ding actually occurred last week, there is probably a whole zone's worth of quests to see to. Many of them will be solo-able. There's good money there until you hit the group quests.
• Grind Scryer (or Aldor) Reputation. There are just a ton of mobs that will drop the Signets or Marks you need not to mention Arcane Tomes and Fel Armaments.
• Work on Tradeskills. Don't forget also your secondaries like cooking, fishing and first aid.
• Primals, Primals, Primals. There's a good market and many will be needed for crafting and enchanting.
• Grind recipes. There are a number of BOP recipes for a number of trades that drop from specific mobs in the wild. Find out where they are and begin committing genocide until they drop what you need.
• Since Mrs. BBB is a rogue, grind lockpicking up until 350 (if it's not already there)

That's just a short list. Hope some of it helped

Getting Ready for End Game

One of my co-workers asked me to write something about "what you do between 60 and the end game." He went on to say "I've got the leveling game down, but I'm not sure what lies ahead of me."

And he does have the leveling part down. At least up to mid forties. He's got (at most recent count) 24 alts of various levels. He has also never played old-world end-game. His newbie druid was merely level 20 when Burning Crusade came out. He never had to worry about attunements for Molten Core, Onyxia, Blackwing Lair & Naxxramas. He never spent too much money on raid consumables. He never spent weeks learning a particular encounter. He is a raid noob.

So, let me answer his questions the best I can. There are a couple things that would-be raiders need to keep in mind. There are also a couple of questions you should already have answered.

Questions:

1. What is my end-game spec? Will I heal or DPS or tank?
2. What are the five most important stats for my end game build? Can I order these hierarchically?
3. Am I ready to be away from the "Old World" cities for long stretches? Can I avoid going to the auction house, bank, trainers in the Old World? Do I have an alt that can perform these duties for me?
4. Have I done some research about what gear I'd like to pick up from various quests, instances, mobs? Someone wrote an awesome guide to having a wish list on their blog and dummy me, I can't find the post. But its out there.
   

Having answered these questions, it's time to take the plunge into Outland Questing. The thing that is most different, and hardest to understand for a player coming from Azeroth is how important reputation is. Reputation rewards offer recipes, enchants, and gear that are the best pre-raid (and sometimes early raid) choices. At least five of those factions also offer heroic versions of their dungeons. For most of the factions there is an early quest that turns into a repeatable quest. As I mentioned when writing about the Cenarion dudes it's important to do those quests at the exclusion of others from the same faction, until you stop getting reputation for the repeatable one. Some of the factions are more optional, clearly benefiting some class or tradeskill over others. Here's a quick list of factions and the items they accept:

• Cenarion Expedition - Unidentified Plant Parts
• Sporeggar - Bog Lord Tendrils, Fertile Spores
• Lower City - Arakkoa Feathers
• Kurenai/Mag'har - Ogre Warbeads
• Consortium - Elekk Tusks, Oshu'gun Crystal Fragment, Ogre Warbeads, Zaxxis Badge, Ethereum Prison Keys
• Scryers - Firewing Signets, Sunfire Signets, Arcane Tomes
• Aldors - Mark of Kil'jaeden, Mark of Sargeras, Fel Armament
• Sha'Tar - Either of the Aldor or Scryer turnins

The next thing to consider is your crafting professions. Everyone should have first aid. And cooking. And probably *ugh* fishing. I'd take the time before heading to Outlands to level cooking and first aid to 300 minimum. Cooking finally makes real sense post 300 giving some of the best food buffs to date.

If you've got a gathering skill, please be 300 skill in it before coming to Outland. That way you can level it as you level from 60-70.

That said, get out there and level. The quests in Outlands are located in a few quest hubs for the most part. Get a bunch, group them as best you can and get out there and do them. Keep an eye out for dungeon quests and do them level appropriate. A nice change from the "Old World" is that most dungeon quests are picked up right outside the dungeon. And there's usually only 2 or 3 for a particular instance.

Here's my guidance on when you can do certain dungeons.

• Hellfire Ramparts & Blood Furnace - 58-60
• Slavepens & Underbog - 61-63
• Auchenai Crypts - 64-66
• Mana Tombs - 66-67
• Old Hillsbrad/Durnholde - 67-68
• Setthek Halls - 68-70
• Shadow Labyrinth - 70
• Shattered Halls - 70
• Steamvaults - 70
• Black Morass - 70
• Mechanar, Botanica, Arcatraz - 70

Another thought. When you hit 68, PLEASE go to Karazhan in Deadwind Pass (by Darkshore/Swamp of Sorrows) and do the pre-requisite quests for Karazhan attunement. You'll very quickly get to collecting key fragments from Shadow Labyrinth, Steamvaults & Arcatraz. If you have the quests the first time you go in there, you'll be better off.

During the 60-70 grind you should be saving money for mounts. If you already have your epic ground mount, you're that much ahead. If not, you'll need to buy that. But at 70, you need to have the 900 gold for flying mount & training. All of the Tempest Keep Instances (Mechanar, Botanica, Arcatraz) are locked out unless you can fly up to them. Summoning doesn't work. Which effectively puts a cap on your progress until you can get the mount. See my articles on mounts for more information