I’m feeling the same stuff. Got Revered with Golden Lotus to open up the Celestials and Shado-pans. At the moment I’m VP capped, and JP capped, and not Revered with anyone. I should get revered with Shado-Pan tomorrow and then being VP capped will not be a problem. (The Trink and the Head piece cost a little less than 4k, so I’ll be back in business then.)
But yes, other than raiding, I’m not interested in doing much more. Especially with the VP cap, heroics aren’t even worth it.
I’m concentrating on the rep for the cloud serpent mount at the moment. I’m at exalted with Tillers, revered with Klaxxi and Golden Lotus, and honored (I think) with August Celestials. Haven’t started Shado-pan, and don’t know anything about whichever new factions will be added in the next patch. Grinding dailies does get old. I enjoy heroics and bgs, while sticking my toe in to test the waters on Raid Finder. My guild isn’t doing any raiding at the moment…even though we have 500+ members, there are rarely more than a handful of 90s online. Lot of people leveling alts, I guess.
Donoma, my tauren paladin on Cairne, made it to 90 last night, though thanks to guild XP bonuses she hit 90 way earlier in Pandaria than my un-guilded rogue did. Specifically, she hit 90 while doing those troll-fighting quests at Zouchin Village in north-eastern Kun-Lai (my rogue hit 90 roughly 1/3 of the way through Townlong Steppes*). The unfortunate result was that she had not yet finished the prerequisite quests to open the gates into the Vale, so still had to complete some tasks before she could get in there and train her Pandarian flying. She (well, my account, I guess) did get two brand-new achievements as soon as she dinged 90: Double Agent (reach maximum level on both an Alliance and a Horde character) and Dynamic Duo (reach maximum level with two different classes).
- Thelois, my rogue, probably would have hit 90 even later had it not been for that wicker man XP bonus during Hallow’s End.
Thelois finally got that Fatty Goat Steak daily, and now I see what everybody on the official forums is complaining about. Though it looks like a post I saw there might be correct - somebody had a theory that AoE farming those goats may reduce the drop rate. He’d tried AoE farming, and would kill 6 goats and come up with just one steak; when he switched to killing them one at a time he got the steaks almost 1:1. It was the same for me. As a rogue, she simply can’t AoE farm those things, so I had to try to tag individual goats before the AoE-ers could get the whole bunch. I ended up getting my four steaks by killing only five goats, one at a time. Meanwhile, by the time I was done I noticed that some of the AoE-ers who were still going at it were the same people who had been there before I started.
I haven’t hit 90 yet, but I’m getting there…
The new zones really are amazing, and the writing is better than I expected too.
Back in Lich King, at the end of the Wintergarde Keep quest chains there is a quest where a lich (Thel’zan, judging by Wowhead) captures you and the Alliance around you, Bolvar Fordragon walks in and saves you. At the time I went “Who is this dude and why should I care about him?” I was pretty confused, as apparently you’re supposed to remember Bolvar from way back in vanilla WoW, which I’d never seriously played through.
On the flip side, at the end of the Valley of the Four Winds, whenChen and Li Li and Mudmug and Mei and everyone from Halfhill come running in to help against the Mantids I started punching the air and cheering. I’m honestly amazed at how much I care about the characters, and how much they feel like friends instead of just NPCs. The personalities of the individual Pandaren, and even of the individual Alliance/Horde characters that travel with you, are so much more well-rounded and interesting than any in the past.
I didn’t even start playing the game until shortly after Wrath’s launch, so yeah, even though I’d played through most of the then-current vanilla Alliance content, I had no idea who Bolvar was when he showed up. I just got the impression that he was some famous general or something. It wasn’t until I read something about him on WowInsider that I learned his history.
I think it really helps that the NPCs have voices now, instead of just popping up walls of text when you click on them. Gives them more “real” personalities.
To amplify on this, the critical “add-in” in that phase of the Stoneplow quests is
Master Bruised Paw reminding you that you know the technique to defeat the Mantid Colossus… the focus blow technique he taught you in the Hidden Master quests
It’s a very well put-together quest chain in that zone.
OTOH, any Hordie who didn’t know who Bolvar Foredragon is obviously didn’t try raiding Stormwind much. Ask an Alliance town raider who Saufang the Elder is. Same thing.
Me, too…I actually got a bit misty. And you forgot Miss Fanny!
Hey jayjay! Quasi wanted to know if you’ll be poking your head in on Alexstrasza 
Question for any high-level blacksmiths: tell me about Trillium Bars. Is my miner better off (or rather, what works better for you) posting those on the AH one at a time, or in stacks? In the past I’ve had a max-level BS so I knew which bars I wanted to buy in stacks and which I wanted to buy singly, but I haven’t leveled my blacksmith yet (actually, haven’t even played him in MoP yet). I’m not a fan of posting stuff singly (and I want to bitchslap the people I see posting 5000+ herbs one at a time), but I know there are some mats that are better posted singly.
The Blue plate i450 PVE gear takes one Trillium Bar each so posting singles is probably your best bet. The other main use will be transmuting Living Steel which takes 6 bars, so maybe a mix of singles and stacks of 6?
There used to be a great questline with him as the questgiver, which by pure randomness I found for the first time with my paladin. Oh man that was soooo coool…
sigh I guess I’m just going to quest more on my tauren paladin before I start worrying about doing dailies. She simply hit 90 way too early and is completely undergeared for level 90 content. Seriously, my paladin has considerably fewer hit points than my rogue. This is not helped by the fact that the Horde AH on Cairne is, by a landslide, the worst AH I’ve seen on any server (I have toons on several). My rogue on WrA (who also hit 90 kind of early), as soon as she hit 90, was able to hit the AH and deck herself out in a full suit of basic level 90 gear for a reasonable price. On the Cairne-Horde AH, you can’t find a full set of level 90 gear, even mismatched, for any price. This isn’t a new situation, either; it’s been this way as long as I’ve had level-capped toons. Cairne just seems to have a miserably low Horde population, with corresponding slim pickings on the AH. Shame it’s really not feasible to pack up the whole guild and move to a more populous server.
I was able to find Donoma a weapon upgrade on the AH, and then went to buy an Elemental Force enchant for it. I’d been paying around 200g for the previous EF scrolls I’d bought. But last night, it appears that the same enchanter whose scrolls I’d been buying found him/herself posting the only Elemental Force scroll and decided that 1500g was a better price. Screw you, I’ll try a Colossus enchant! (My human paladin is an enchanter so I know that Elemental Force is not an expensive-to-make enchant.)
So yeah. Donoma took a stab at the Golden Lotus dailies last night, and due to her gear it was a miserable slog that took entirely too long to complete - so long that midnight server time was approaching and she ended up not having enough time to do the Tillers dailies. It probably didn’t help that the selection of GL dailies included both the “enter the spirit realm and release 15 pandaren spirits” quest and the “defeat 30 Unleashed Spirits” quest. She would enter the spirit realm, and couldn’t take two steps without a ghostie spotting her, followed promptly by getting swarmed by ghosts, knocked back into the material realm, and immediately aggroing any nearby mogu as well. It was amazing that she got through those quests while only dying once.
OTOH, a few weeks ago I noticed that, since race-changing Donoma from blood elf to tauren last year, I didn’t have any belf characters anywhere, and I also had no warrior on Cairne. So I rolled up a blood elf warrior, Destiri, and decided to finally take a stab at Fury spec (all of my previous warriors have been Arms). So far it’s been quite a bit of fun. The only problem is that, with three heirloom pieces + guild XP perks, she’s quickly outleveling the content she’s doing. I’m not skipping her ahead, though. When she finished Eversong Woods I brought her down to do Silverpine/Hillsbrad instead of Ghostlands, simply because I’d heard so much about the fun storylines in those zones but never got around to doing them during Cataclysm. (I’d started an undead mage to do them, but lost interest in the character not far into the first part of Silverpine.) So Destiri completed Silverpine last night, and I’ll play her through Hillsbrad and probably Arathi. That should get her through the only Eastern Kingdoms Horde content that I haven’t already seen; after that I’ll feel free to skip content as necessary.
Mister Rik, here’s a tip for freeing the Pandaren spirits that I’ve found useful. I’m assuming that you have a flying mount. You can stay mounted, and still right-click on the spirits. Then, the moment you’ve freed one, launch yourself into the air. The ghosties can’t follow you and can’t knock you back into the spirit world. Fly over to another couple of spirits, and repeat.
Well interesting Tuesday. I went to do my last days worth of Shado Pan dailies (to get revered and some gear) I was so close to revered and for now that’s as far as I’ll go. dun dun *duuuun *I ended up with 11988/12000 rep. DAMN! I know I should have used the Pilgrim’s Bounty buff! I was hoping to buy some gear and start collecting more VP since I’m currently capped.
So then I got into a Terrace LFR and that was a lot of fun! I got three pieces. One raidfinder token for a piece I already have the heroic version of :rolleyes:, and downgrade cloak, and an upgrade weapon. Not exactly a waste of 2 tokens, but still.
During LFR I was much farther down the dps lists than in past weeks. Need.Moar.Gear! 
Terrace is a lot of fun in lfr, and hopefully in 10-normal.
This will make your life much easier. I stumbled on to it early, like the first or second time I got that daily by watching someone else do it.
Also, you can pick up some valor doing the Cloud Serpent dailies. Those are usually less combat intensive…two of them involve fishing. Or spec Ret and run heroics to get your VP…
I’ll give that a try - thanks for the tip
Already ret I’m hoping to start doing heroics with BDL. I haven’t run heroics since Wrath, so I’d rather go with a group of friends to at least familiarize myself before I go LFG-ing. My rogue has been doing Tillers/Anglers/Cloud Serpent dailies for a couple weeks, though she’s been ignoring Cloud Serpent the last few days since she opened up the Golden Lotus quests (don’t really care that much about getting that serpent mount at this point). She still needs to find her way to the Klaxxi, I suppose… she hasn’t cracked 1000 VP yet.
On another note … I GOTS A PANDA! Stopped by my local tobacco store and the pretty Korean lady behind the counter was giving away little stuffed pandas:
I’ve gotten Exalted with the Tillers and Cloud Serpents, but haven’t hit Revered yet with any of the VP factions. I’m close to it with the Klaxxi though and I still have normal quests in the zone, which will probably push me over without having to do any more dailies. I’ve decided to skip the other VP factions for now. I can just barely get onto LFR and will probably just gear through there, since I don’t think my guild will really get raiding this tier. 5.1 is introducing items that give you a 100% rep bonus for those factions.
To be honest, I’m not even generating the VP required to buy things anyway. So slow to get…
Yep the combination of the rep grinds plus the drip, drip of VP is the issue I think. Two weeks ago our casual guild were working out a 10 person team to try raiding for the first time, all of us just about at the gear level for LFR. Now? All playing alts.
I love Pandaria and had a blast levelling, but something is broken at 90.
Had a great run in LFR earlier tonight, doing The Dread Approach (first half of Heart of Fear). I got a sigil and attenuating bracers off the first boss, and tornado summoning censer from Blade Lord Ta’yak. All without using any bonus rolls. 
That’s pretty much the luckiest I have ever been on a raid. :D:D:D
Grats!
After a quiet few days we had plenty of 90s on last night so decided to chain run heroics for gear. Though I didn’t get any drops, every cloth piece had spirit no good to our resto druid and we had no priest, I got enough VP to buy the rep shoulders and finally ticked over to i462. LFR next then.