Imagine WoW is a computer baseball game. In LK and Cata, when you got enough badges/VPs for a new piece of gear, let’s say that was like hitting a home run. What happens in the baseball game? Your player rounds the bases, touches home plate, and your team scores a run.

In MoP, w/ the added rep requirement, it’s more like this: you hit a homerun. Your player trots to first base. In between first and second, the umpire stops him, and says, “Before you can continue and score, you have to go to right field and catch twenty fly balls first.”

…WHA?!! How does that have anything to do with hitting the home run at all?

“Dailies could still be optimal in terms of Rep per hour, but there would be options for those who felt they needed them.”

And what I said here:

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/7006896125

I certainly don’t particularly like dailies and I’d rather do something challenging or interesting. But rep grinds are rep grinds…except when the only way to do them is with dailies.

Vanilla had no reputations like Mists (AQ event was a server wide thing and a one time deal).

BC reps could be ground out in dungeons or turn-ins.

Same in Wrath.

Same in Cata.

Only in Mists are dailies the only option, and you can only do so many a day. Doesn’t matter if you can dedicate 5 hours on a day, can only do dailies for 30 minutes or whatever for the faction you need rep with.

That said…

““I have to do the maximum amount of dailies every day because it increases the probability that my guild will down Boss X a week earlier than we otherwise would by an amount less than 1%.”

Not so much.”

When you’re relatively undergeared for heroic modes (Paragon did at least two 25 man runs for their single 10 man team, just so you know) and wiping on DPS check bosses like Gara’jal at 1-2%, then yeah, the gear really matters.

Saying you don’t “have” to get the gear is like saying you don’t “have” to use flasks. Or “have” to get enchants/gems. Or “have” to wear pants.

Totally down with using the words “have to” in this context.

“I have to do the maximum amount of dailies every day because it increases the probability that my guild will down Boss X a week earlier than we otherwise would by an amount less than 1%.”

Not so much.

I do think Blizzard could reduce some of the lamentations and beating of breasts associated with the current rep grinds if they added some alternate, if less efficient, sources of reputation. For example, by the end of Wrath you could earn reputation with the Sons of Hodir by searching for Everfrost Chips, buying Relics of Ulduar on the AH, or by running dungeons and purchasing Commendation Badges with whatever emblems were in those days. Dailies could still be optimal in terms of Rep per hour, but there would be options for those who felt they needed them.

For the last two years I have been a backup raider, my RL schedule won’t let me commit to a schedule. I spent countless hours leveling toons, gearing them, grinding rep, heroics, LFR, whatever it took to be ready.

In that time I raided about 10 nights.

When I looked at the amount of things I don’t like Thani would have to do to be ready and weighed it against 10-15 evenings of actual fun spaced out over two years (not to mention $40 for the xpac and $360 for two years subscription) I decided it simply was no longer worth it.

If there was a way I could just raid with friends without all the other stuff I likely would have stayed.

When people say that you don’t “have to” do things like the Klaxxi, the Golden Lotus, and so on, it’s wrong. If you are one of those sorts of people like me who likes to raid at that “upper tier 2″ level (as I like to call it) – those guilds not quite as hardcore as the Paragons and Premonitions and vodkas, but still pushing server firsts, US top ten percent, etc. – we do have to, because playing at that level requires a maximal personal investment from everyone involved (with a few limits, which is what sets those “tier 1″ guilds apart – no one’s asking guilds like that to race change on their own dime, etc). If I want to do what I find fun – raiding at a very high level – I have to do loads of shit this expansion that is boring as fuck: hours and hours of dailies that I don’t have the damn time to.

Your commentary about the rep grinds of BC also ignore the fact that you could beast those reputations out in normal dungeons, and also ignores similar bitching from raiders about Scryers/Aldor’s unbelievable gold (or time) sinks. Sons of Hodir could be plowed through with Relics of Hodir, and later with Emblems of Triumph that came in like rain. These required reputations (for Valor Point gear, pre-raid crafting patterns, and required enchanting formulae) have no short-circuit in Mists. You MUST put in your weeks of Golden Lotus dailies, your weeks of August Celestials dailies, your weeks of Shadow-Pan dailies (and the latter two are gated BEHIND the first!). And this is also on top of the further reduction of convenience in Mists – no Have Group, Will Travel; no guild cauldrons; feasts are sub-optimal… Players with limited time and specific playstyles find their already limited time being choked out by all this ancillary crap that they must do.

That’s why people are so angry about this “you don’t have to” attitude from both Blizzard and the community – because we do, and basically dismissing our complaints out of hand because it doesn’t apply to you is rude as hell.