LFG Steamvault at level 80

3/10/2010

While perusing the list of blogs I read, I came across Mania's tweet about wishing there was LFD available for running lower level dungeons at 80, i.e. ZG. Seriously, why not? It's hard enough to drum together a group using the trade channel, and you already could group for these dungeons when you were a lower level, why not at a higher level?

I'm still grimly pursuing my Loremaster achievement, with only 20-30 quests left on both Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms. I've gotten most of the quest achievements in Outlands, and gotten Sholozar Basin, Icecrown, and Storm Peaks completed in Northrend.
I'll finish up with Borean Tundra, Dragonblight, Grizzly Hills, Howling Fjord, and Zul'drak after I've gotten Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms Loremaster finished.

Most of the quest achievements in Outlands, I said. However, Bloodshrike probably did 3 or 4 of the quests in Hellfire Peninsula before moving on to Zangarmarsh, because I stumbled on this little tidbit of info. Thrallmar - "If you do the bulk of the Thrallmar quests instead of quickly moving on to the next zone, you might expect to reach Honored after 1 or 2 levels of play. However, once you reach Honored, you hit an earnings barrier that you can only remove when you are level 68 and can start re-earning points in the Shattered Halls dungeon.....One option is to grind reputation via Ramparts and Blood Furnace runs to 5999/6000 before doing any Thrallmar quests outside the instances, as those continue to yield reputation up to Exalted."

At that point, I seriously never thought I'd see the inside of a dungeon unless I was soloing it. So, I just ignored the quests, and took myself to Zangarmarsh. Now, being the achievement hound that I've turned out to be, I wanna get exalted with Thrallmar. I'd also like to not have to solo those dungeons ad nauseum to do so. I just ran Hellfire Ramparts for the hell of it with my Ally mage Clockwrkmage, and had a blast with the group, Blizzarding everything in sight. Granted, at level 80 it wouldn't be difficult, it's just going to be boring, and even running it with a group of 60's would speed things up.

I'm not sure why the capability to join any dungeon isn't available. Apart from the possibility of Stockades being farmed by Horde for the easy availability of wool cloth, I don't think someone is going to constantly run Wailing Caverns for the greens that drop.

Also, going back to the title of the post, I'd like to go for the Guardian of Cenarius title, but again, I missed the boat on that one. While it's simplicity itself to turn in Twilight Texts until you ding exalted with Cenarion Circle, it's a bit harder with Cenarion Expedition.

I do have to say I like how Blizzard has refined dungeons and zones in Northrend. Dungeons are shorter, zones don't have a lot of quests that force you to go to a different zone, come back, go to a 3rd zone, come back, and finally the quest chain is completed. Everything is more linear. When you're on your first toon, you don't mind doing all these far-flung quests, as everything is new and exciting. On your 10th toon, you look at the quest, you evaluate on whether Blizzard actually provided enough mobs to complete it on the first pass, or whether the quest item has a ridiculously low drop rate, and then you might decide to not pick it up at all.

While I do want all my toons to be at least exalted with the home cities, I'm passing up a lot of quests nowadays, just because I don't want to do them. Like in Harold & Kumar go to White Castle, I've gone too far.
Kumar: I forgot my cell phone.
Harold: You wanna run back and get it?
[both turn and look at their front door 20 feet from them]
Kumar: No, we've gone too far.