Flying in Draenor

I'm spending more time in Lion's Watch and Tanaan Jungle again.

Flying was introduced in Draenor in World of Warcraft on September 2nd and I am still firmly on the ground.  I starting writing this post in early July around the time that Blizzard decided to allow people to jump through several hoops in order to be able to fly.  Before that time there was some comments from Blizzard employees that there might never be flying in Draenor and much consternation from some players because of it.

For me, it was what I expected.  There were a number of things to do in Draenor that were supposed to be a challenge because you were on the ground.  Even before Warlords of Draenor (WoD) was released, we were told that there wasn't a plan for flight.  It was fun to be able to finally be allowed to fly in Burning Crusade but WoW is a game and I am fine with the developers tweaking the rules to add new challenges.

That said, now that flying is here and I've started testing what it will take to get Revered reputation for the three factions, I'm pretty sure I'll complete them.  One of the factions, Hand of the Prophet (for Alliance) is part of the quest line that gets you the Shipyard and to the Tanaan Jungle, so it's pretty straightforward to get the reputation.  There are seven daily quests and you get to choose one of two every day.  After I had done the campaign quests and each of the dailies once, I believe I only needed to do 3 or 4 more to get to Revered.  Right now I'm only 100 reputation away and will just wait to do one more daily (they provide 500 reputation each).

The second is The Saberstalkers.  I visited once briefly by myself and then just joined a custom group twice and already half way through honored.  There is a weekly quest, Rumble in the Jungle, where you can use three totems that you buy with the claws that you gather as you kill Saberstalkers to challenge three elite Saberstalkers.  I will wait until I can get this quest next week (after the Tuesday reset) and join one more group which will probably put me at Revered.  You also get Fel-Corrupted Apexis Fragment that can be used for the last reputation from the three elites.

The last reputation is the most annoying, Order of the Awakened.  There is primarily one daily quest that gets you this reputation and it requires gathering 10 Fel-Corrupted Apexis Fragments.  These fragments come from treasures or rare mobs in Tanaan Jungle.  The combination of only being able to do this quest once a day and having to either search for treasures (I did buy the map for 600 gold) and hoping to find the rare mobs to kill.  It feels both too constricted (only once a day) and too random (finding the treasures and rares).  That said, I have made it about 25% into honored and have decided to purchase the Hunter's Seeking Crystal for 1000 gold that will teleport me to a nearby rare so I can complete it.  I still find it annoying as I did the Timeless Isle.

I enjoyed finishing most of the quests in WoD with my hunter and priest and I'd like to get some of the other toons to 100 so I can get all the crafting high level recipes that require a level 3 garrison but I wouldn't mind making that faster for them.  I figure it is worth getting flying and buying the Excess Potions of Accellerated Learning to speed getting the other three or four characters to level 100.  The potions cost 100 garrison resources and I am wasting most of my resources now since I don't have a use for them outside of the missions I do about once a week.

I would have been fine with them leaving everyone on the ground in Draenor but jumping through these hoops has probably kept me playing longer than I would have otherwise, so I guess it's a win for Blizzard this way and I am sure I will enjoy being able to fly from place to place once I have it.