Reputation, Schmeputation

Waaaayyyyy back when, when we had to walk to Orgrimmar in the snow, barefoot, uphill both ways, I had one character that I played. Just one. Malqueso. Didn't even have a bank alt yet. Weird to think back on this, but that's the way it was. He is a hunter, and there's a class-specific quest line ending in Sunken Temple that winds its way through Azshara. All you sourdoughs will know what I'm talking about...every class has class quests in ST...but n00bs probably don't do them often any more; who needs that level 52 garbage when you're headed toward level 80?

Anyway, I was one of the n00bs back then that didn't think that there might need to be an order to what I did. I'd mistakenly run north into Felwood at about level 25, died very quickly, and mentally written that zone off as "mean." It didn't occur to me that the furbolgs in Azshara MIGHT be creatures that I really shouldn't oughtta kill, no matter how much they wanted to attack me (instead, if you spend many hours in Felwood, the furbolgs in Azshara start to like you). And hey, I was pretty good at killing things back then, so kill the furbolgs I did while running around Azshara doing my quests.

Later I needed to get to Winterspring. Now, you know that any character other than a Death Knight has to run through Timbermaw Hold to get to Winterspring, right? I did that. The furbolgs still didn't like me much, and so kill them I did, all the way through. I think I was well beyond Hated by the time I was done clearing a path to the flight point up there.

Needless to say, when it came time to look at the cool rewards available through having, say, Exalted reputation with Timbermaw, I cried at the number of Bad Furbolgs (as opposed to the Good Furbolgs, of course) I had to kill to consider even getting close to Friendly. And it's not like you could go do something non-repetitive; you had to kill, and kill, and kill, and kill the same mobs, and then kill them some more. It was WoW's cure for insomnia.

But that was a long, long time ago. Now, we're all experts at gaining reputation...starting typically at neutral, then becoming friendly, honored, revered, and exalted, in that order. Some reps you can gain by wearing tabards through instances; some you have to do daily quests for, and others you can turn stuff in to obtain. In any event, each faction has a set of rewards for those they hold in high regard. And those rewards?

Often, largely useless.

This occurred to me last night. My druid alt became Exalted with Wyrmrest...the dragons...during an instance. Yay! So afterwards, off I went to the Wyrmrest Temple to see what cool stuff I could get...I remembered wanting the epic something, but couldn't recall exactly what.

Turns out...it was bracers. I already had bracers. They'd dropped last night, a much better set than the ones from Wyrmrest. Not the first time that's happened, either...every time I'm close to being ready to qualify for something, it seems like something drops that makes me not want what I just worked so hard to become qualified for. Granted, there's a new instance, ICC, where the reputation rewards are pretty high level compared to everything else, but I betcha when the next thing comes out those rep rewards will be as useless as Timbermaw rewards are now.

Reputation, schmeputation.