For the last few days I have been in a cycle of pretty much playing nothing but World of Warcraft. Now I am not entirely certain why it is suddenly the most important thing for me to be playing. However I have an idea that it is more or less tied to FOMO. Right now the leveling in the game is insanely fast and I know that I have a server full of lower level characters that I would love to catch up. I’ve played on Argent Dawn since the game launched in 2004, but primarily on the Alliance side of the fence. When The Scryers was merged into the server in 2015 I set forth to separate my Horde and Alliance characters so that all of my Alliance stayed on Argent Dawn and I either moved or created new characters on The Scryers.
During the normal course of the Battle for Azeroth expansion, I managed to level both a Demon Hunter and a Warrior. More recently I finished leveling a Paladin Alliance side and leveled a horde Paladin and Hunter as well and have been working on leveling a Druid. This influx of leveling is all thanks to the “Winds of Wisdom” buff that was put into place as a bit of a boon to those folks who were sheltering in their home. Recently it was announced that this buff would in fact stay in place until the pre-expansion patch later this year. This has in turn triggered a strong desire for me to level all of the things. Back during the pre-release events for Legion I managed to pull all of my Alliance characters up to level 100, and I guess in some way I am hoping to do something similar here on the Horde side. I do have a level 120 boost sitting waiting there for me, but I figure more than likely I am either going to use it on my Mage… which is traditionally the character I am least likely to level on my own… or make a Death Knight since I already have a high level one sitting on another server Horde side.
Yesterday the game changed however, and a brand new buff was introduced and it has me shifting around a bit. I’ve not unlocked any of the new Allied Races on the Alliance side, and I really would like to be able to roll Dark Iron Dwarves. The Impressive Influence buff gives you bonus reputation in the Broken Isles, Argus, Kul Tiras, Zandalar and Nazjatar… or essentially this is a way for you to catch up on the last two expansions Pathfinder buff relatively easily. Essentially in order to unlock those Allied races I am missing, I just need to get a bunch of factions to Exalted, which seems considerably more reasonable when I am getting double faction. Were I a smarter man I would have leveled one of my humans and used it to grind out those factional gains.
So now I find myself in the unfortunate place of being split between loyalties of grinding out a bunch of new characters on the Horde side, or using the faction buff to catch up Alliance side and unlock those new races. As of right now I am splitting time between the two. So for example last night I ground through all of the World Quests available that would give me the reputations that I cared about, and then finished the night out working on my Druid. I have a feeling this is going to be what the flow of my game play will look like for awhile. Maybe at some point I will figure out what exactly I want to do with that boost, but for the time being it is sitting there mocking me. I really do actually enjoy going through the process of leveling characters, and as a result the boost sorta always feels like I am ruining that experience.
I can’t help but notice that you used the word ‘grind’ an awful lot in this post.
In contrast, there’s only one instance where you speak of enjoyment, and that’s the last paragraph where you talk about the fact that the boost kinda ruins said enjoyment (of leveling characters).
I don’t know…maybe just let it all go and play something else entirely…?
My suggestion would be focus on rep for now. The exp buff is lasting until Shadowlands but the rep is only a month (for now at least).
I don’t know if this will affect your decision at all, but it looks like they’re lifting the rep requirements for allied races in Shadowlands. If you want to level them NOW you’d need to grind rep, but otherwise, it shouldn’t matter.
Right; well, with the influence buff now in play as well, I see my time to start playing WoW again rapidly approaching.
I’d like to get Pathfinder for BFA while it’s up for sure.