Vanilla WoW was a notorious grinding treadmill, and time has done little to discourage the practice; the aforementioned daily quests, justice points and faction rep rewards of Cataclysm are still designed to squeeze that last drop of humanity from players with equal sadism. It’s an ugly word for an ugly device, creating the illusion of replayability through sheer mindless repetition.
From an IGN article about moving on from WOW. What’s fascinating to me is that vanilla WOW was, for MMO veterans like me, a major relief from grinds. It introduced the concept of questing to gain levels instead of endlessly killing mobs for XP. It was so very much less grindy than anything that preceded it, and it’s only become less grindy since. I think the writer of that article would faint if he were asked to play Dark Age of Camelot as it was when first released. Everquest would kill him on the spot.
But the tastes and expectations of gamers have moved on even from that. I confess I’m looking forward to Secret World and Guild Wars 2, to the point where I might even build a gaming PC to play them. Maybe.
My husband is now cranking out the projects on his priest, who is making excellent progress toward acquiring tenure. Kaliope’s brief guide has useful tips that he confirms to be indeed useful! You don’t really need more than a brief guide. Wowhead has a list of all projects if you want to spoil the potential surprises.
The cheat sheet version: Don’t solve artifacts until you’re level 100. Fragments pile up forever so there’s no pressure to solve until you stop getting survey skillups. Keystones/scrolls can be traded & sold on the AH. The minigame is minimizing your travel time and using your travel methods efficiently. (Yes, we can all hate on those lucky bastard mages even more.) You can combine it with working on the Limnologist fishing achievements & with learning all the new flight points. It’s boring enough that you can drink or watch a movie while doing it, but also strangely soothing.
You might also want to save it for those middle-expansion blues when you’re waiting for Blizz to release a new patch with the new raid in it. I’m pretty sure I don’t want to add it to the list of daily in-game chores Leafie has. And yeah, those Therazane dailies feel like chores already, which is why I took a break from playing her this weekend.
