Hard to believe, but I’m not Exalted with any of my home cities on any of my characters.
In fact, I’m not Exalted with any city with anyone. (Shattrath aside, but that doesn’t really count for this exercise.)
How does this happen? Doing every quest you come across for the life of your character, and you reach level 80, and you’re nowhere near Exalted with your own home town even.
I’ve got a level 56 Rogue, Darkhand, who is running around Kharanos at the moment. No, he is not doing the Noblegarden stuff. He’s simply doing every noob quest he can find in order to get the Reputation. Some quests gain reputation with all the Alliance, others just one particular faction. He’s after a Gnomish Mechanostrider. Being an Engineer, how could he not? Next steps will be flying machines and then a chopper. In another four years perhaps.
But, back to the original point. How could I not be Exalted with any city on any of my 80’s? It seems I must either 1) Turn in 1,000’s of stacks of Runecloth, and/or 2) Do every quest in every 1-20 area for every faction. Any of those 3 options sounds outright stupid. Some Blizzard Design Exec is thinking to himself: “The players, they absolutely love the fruitless grind?”
But it’s not fruitless. Now that I have three Champions, each of them has to turn in commendation writs in order to become Exalted with their home cities. And then claim their titles, Greenclaw of Darnassus, Stormsoul of Thunderbluff, and Msaker of Orgrimmar.
Msaker, actually, is after a riding raptor, and if he gets Exalted with the Darkspear turning in writs, he’ll be their Champion, and maybe he’ll be Msaker of Sen’Jin (and Thrall and Orgrimmar can go pound sand because they’re a touch too tough to please). (See, with a riding raptor, he’ll have a “dinosaur” dragon for a flying mount, and a “dinosaur” raptor for his land mount, and he’s already green and rather brutish… Style points. Grind out the three factions to become “The Diplomat” and we’ve got a plate full of irony.)
Tag Teaming the Champion at the “Enemy at the Gates” daily (or the Champion version of it actually), is hardly chivalric. But then do the scourge really deserve our chivalry? We reserve that for folks like us. Honor bound. That’s the same principle behind Thrall and Jaina being friends and showing each other respect. Thrall is the honorable brute, Varian Wrynn the hot-headed human who’ll see victory without worrying about the honor behind it. (So the bad are good, and the good are bad, and you’ve got yourself a game that either side can claim a higher moral ground, allowing you to play either side in good conscience.)
Dang, jumped the tracks again! (I was actually trying to remember which philosopher talked about “Noble Brutes.” Was it Thoreau?) Tag Teaming the Champion in the Enemy at the Gates, Champion version, of the daily, makes the encounter MUCH easier. One person holds him, the other just reduces his shields and charges him. If he changes targets, you change roles. Easy peasy.
Kinless Chronicles 
I wasn’t exalted with any of the racial factions either (before the Argent Tournament came to town). I think it had something to do with leveling before 2.0, when there wasn’t as much rep to be had, and the rep gains from quests diminished just as the experience did as you got higher than the recommended level. Not sure when you leveled your characters, but that’s what I blame it on! 🙂
On the other hand, my gnome, who I started leveling just after BC came out hit exalted with Stormwind almost by accident. I was just turning in a quest in Felwood and BAM! Exalted with Stormwind. *shrug*
The Argent Tournament is certainly going to make the grind a lot easier!
Yes, that was the case. Most all of my characters are pre-BC. My Belf Rogue and Draenei Warrior are post-BC, and I’m not worried about them. Yeah, it would have been pointless, and in fact detrimental, to have worked out all the beginning quests earlier because doing them then, and not today, meant I’d have lost out on all that reputation. At least we have the tournament to help recover.
My oldest character is a Human Warlock. Created in December of ’04, level 60 around April of ’05. He’s not ever REVERED with the Alliance factions. This despite the fact that he’s personally carried the head of Onyxia to Stormwind, and join armies to defend Azeroth against Ragnaros, Nefarian, and the denizens of Ahn’qiraj.
Fast forward to my Draenei Paladin. He hit 60 shortly after the release of TBC and he was already exalted with 4 of 5 Alliance factions – and nearly there with the 5th (Gnomeragan). Draenei got it better than most, though. The starting quests for them grant a TON of Exodar rep (I was Revered before level 20), which feeds into a ton of rep for the other Alliance cities. I thought this especially ironic since the Blood Elves don’t even start as Friendly with the other Horde cities.
I started my current characters after BC hit, so I got all the early and big reputation gains. I hit Darnassus rep hard with my Draenei so I could get a tiger mount, which ended up putting me half-way through revered with all the capitals by the time I was 80. I spent a bit of time going through the starter regions again and managed to raise them all to exalted to get the title Ambassador.
If you are unlucky enough to have completed the early quests before the reputation system was overhauled the only option is the runecloth turn-in, which is really tedious but you can get huge amounts running the Scholomance or Stratholme solo, as well as boosting AD rep at the same time.
Being Ambassador makes the final stage of the jousting quests pretty easy, and I can just swap from one faction to the other. But I chose three writs as quest rewards before realising that they are only useful for buying rep-gain items, bah.
I find that everyone attacks anything that moves for the Enemy at the Gates quest, which really helps with knocking down the big boys. I don’t think anyone really cares about who tags what and it is a rare example of people showing generosity of spirit in helping provide some destructive mayhem. I stick around a little while and lance some tagged horseriders myself to help out.
The inclusion of city rep with the Argent Tournament is *huge* for my toons. All of them began life prior to the reputation buffs. Right now Rainchaser, my hunter, has knocked down Ogrimmar and Thunderbluff and should have Senjin to exalted when I take care of my dailies this afternoon. Ambassador is now no longer a drag back through all of the early quests I missed – but instead – one of the more entertaining chains of dailies I’ve done.
@pjharvey – Enemy at the Gates is probably my least favorite of the dailies. Still stuck with a slow flyer my toons simply take too long to get down there and I get way too annoyed with the flyers aggroing from every corner when I’m trying to down Lieutenants. I’ve pretty much skipped it.
Yep, I’d agree to a cooperative spirit at the Enemy at the Gates quest and downing the Champions. Here, you cannot sit out the hard work, and have to tag a Champion while on a mount. No free ride here.
Yeah, the city rep is kind of nice. I might make Exalted with Darnassus tonight. Thunderbluff and Orgrimmar/Sen’jin will take a bit longer.
I don’t know why the Druid has such decent Darnassus rep. I guess Azshara, Felwood, and Winterspring were all heavy Darnassus areas.
The Druid is actually doing the Valiants quest for the Exodar at the moment. Might make Ambassador some day afterall. 🙂