Despite all my kvetching, every night finds my hunter doing Tiller and Golden Lotus dailies, and sometimes Klaxxi as well. But that’s cause I like the Klaxxi.

I’m doing Golden Lotus because Cassie told me how bad they suck, and i guess i decided since she suffered through that to get the pattern to make me an epic mail chestpiece, I’d suffer through to get the JC patterns to make the Sapphire Kitty. Which is very cute, btw.

/hands you a shiny new Internet

Perhaps it’s the absence of a clear goal within the game that makes it hard to even identify with the factions, and reduces them to just vendors. And why did they put the combined vendor so far away in Townlong Steppes?

The other thing I’m feeling (and seeing in guildies) and interested if others agree, is that the dailies (and thus the game) seem to have an addictive quality that I haven’t felt in over 4 years of the game. Perhaps it’s the valor reward and desire to cap that. Perhaps it’s the gating of 2 factions behind another faction. Perhaps it’s the lack of a clear plan that makes them all seem more urgent.

I noticed that the one time I was able to cap valor last week I just stopped. It seemed pointless. Perhaps linking valor to dailies was a mistake?

If this word stood out to you, if it shocked you, then I want you to hold onto that feeling, and remember that every time you ever intend to use a word to hurt someone else, including slurs against other individuals AND GROUPS, what you are doing is trying to inflict that same feeling of pain on someone else.

That includes against people who do not share your political views, btw.

I’ll admit, I was inspired to set this hook and see if anyone would take it by the sudden rise of people calling others ‘retards’ in the news, and apparently thinking that’s all right.

Any time someone does that shit, drives me crazy.

I try to limit myself to asshole and asshat these days, because crap in the brain sums up what I think of some of those people.

Also, there is a hump in the rep grinding and after you get over that, it does all get a lot more relaxed and fun. (As Rades says, some of the dailies are quite fun in themselves if you don’t absolutely hate dailies in general.) I don’t say this to excuse Blizzard, because the Golden Lotus is a tedious grind — although there is at least one very fun daily that turns up sometimes after you hit Revered. For me, it was the point where I had high enough iLvL for LFR and had finished off one of the daily grinds. After that, it all did feel a lot more optional, I could pick the epic I wanted from rep and work towards getting the VP and rep to eventually buy it and let other things sit on the back burner.

It’s trying to do everything at once that weighs people down and at the start of an expansion on a new 90, you do feel that way. So it does get better, it isn’t going to be like this the whole way through the expansion.

…then I read “and the inevitable cocksuckers running in and pulling 10 mobs” and my blood kinda ran cold. Hate speech is not okay, yo.

I think it’s something to do if and when over a year.

I dinged a DK to 90, but the prospect of grinding Cloud Serpent (JC recipes) AND Klaxxi (BS recipes) just has me exasperated.

It sucks, because I really REALLY enjoyed this expansion right from the start, but this whole ball and chain rep grind mess has me beyond frustrated.