Distracted from the Grind

A lot of the reputation grinds in the World of Warcraft are just that, grinds. Long, repetitive, somewhat mindless, and ultimately boring grinds. There's a reason why many people ignore many reputation grinds that just require multitudes of tedious killing and unvarying repeatable quests. It just gets so boring and takes so much time that unless you are completely focused and dedicated, there will be things that will distract you from it. Distractions are exactly what is needed to keep the grind going.

This has happened to me since I started my quest to get exalted reputation with the Frostsaber Trainers for the Winterspring Frostsaber mount. I've continued somewhat diligently and tried to remain focused on completing the quests. I've even gone as far as to try to complete these as efficiently as possible because I really wanted to finish quickly.

Recently I've joined a new guild and have been asked to help in some instances. Initially I avoided joining these runs thinking that any thing I do that isn't grinding the reputation quests is time away from, . . . well grinding the reputation quests. I realized that the grind was just getting tedious and I found myself only casually trying to gain reputation. So it didn't make sense to avoid other things just to focus on grinding.

I finally joined a group when the GM asked if I could help in an instance. She knew I was grinding rep and didn't want to bother me, but they really needed some DPS to finish the instance. So I joined the group and I'm glad I did. It reminded me why I enjoy playing WoW. Even though I've done the instance dozens of times, many of the guildies in the group were still leveling. So it was a lot fun watching those learn the fights and make new discoveries.

So this one distraction broke the tedium of the reputation grind and actually allowed me to go back to it. Distractions are exactly what's needed to refresh a long reputation grind. Since then I've joined a few more instance runs and have been having a great time. I've also managed to fit in more reputation grinding because of this.

So if you get the opportunity to do something else that sounds fun, do it. Sure your reputation grind will be longer, but at least this way you'll be having fun instead of bored out of your mind.