For people missing WoD Pathfinder due specifically to the rep grind, there is something that will be coming up Soon ™ that you can prepare for, which can help.
I am by no means saying this is an ideal solution. I personally feel the rep requirements for all non-current pathfinders should be erased. Just wanted to pass along some information.
Next week, starting on the 19th, the in game calendar states that the TBC TimeWalking event will start. These obviously reward Timewarped badges.
On the PTR the vendors, WoD TimeWalking is being introduced, and the vendors are available. These sell faction tokens for 50 badges. You can get what looks to be a token for any faction. Each token is 300 rep. These tokens are bind on account.
My guess is May 28th for WoD TWing. This is when the next TBC TWing is (aka, when the cycle resets). So instead it would have WoD TWing then TBC the next time.
With the rep tokens being BoA, you can stash badges on alts, when WoD TWing comes around purchase the tokens and send them all to one character to be used.
I know this is really planning a good few months into the future. And…heck…I will probably forget about it myself. But for people that are better than me and can plan ahead, and still need the rep for WoD Pathfinder and don’t plan on getting it before hand…stash those badges.
There are 3 reps required to get WoD Pathfinder, and they have to be revered, not Exalted.
Big no on the gold sink. Having to drop huge amounts for every alt was annoying and i love having flying while leveling. Pathfinder is awesome for that. We have enough gold sinks already.
That being said:
Pathfinder requirements being loosened for old content or removed would be ideal. Saying this as someone who earned it in content
Time gating being removed from flying would be fine. That is, the ability to earn it at max level and maybe even not tied to rep, but exploration and quests so you still experience the content but don’t need to wait to fly.
This is the part of Pathfinding which makes it acceptable to me. WoD Pathfinding was a bit annoying with needing to find the treasures but overall the achievements are something you get through normal play on one character. Then they share to your other characters. There comes a point that if you want things in game, you have to… play the game.
Overall, while buying flying is convenient, I’m better with Pathfinder because it shares to other characters. As opposed to having to pay a flying fee on every character I have. If they even left it at 5k gold for flying, as have been previous flying charges, that gets expensive when multiplied by eleven characters. Worse if they make it more expensive.
Buuuut I really don’t care enough about anything in WoD to even bother :L If I need something from Draenor, I’ll just use that stupid feather thing to get around. Too lazy to bother even an easier rep-grind there. WoD was just so bleugh.
I didn’t play during WoD and haven’t stepped foot back in Draenor since leveling my 2 max-level characters through it. There’s no way in hell I would ever bother going back there just to do Pathfinder. I would rather spend that time doing pretty much anything else, such as playing some of the other great games that are available today.
There is positive and negative elements both ways. If it was left a gold sink then blizzard should design the leveling process and end game economy to balance out around the costs of the games gold sinks.
For example i remember making ruffly 10k from leveling in wrath. So when the time came to buy the gold sink i was fine.
If the cost of something is x just by naturally playing the game. Then the quest rewards and daillies should reward players a profit to pay x and still have gold left over.
But that isn’t the definition of a gold sink. A gold sink is a cost designed to remove extra gold from the economy. Putting gold into the economy to cover it defeats the purpose and prevents it from being a gold sink.
Make it a gold sink like it was in BC. BC was 6200g per character. With inflation we’re talking over 100,000g equivalent, not accounting for it being account-wide.
Keep pathfinder—but leave it as an alternative way to unlock flight for those who don’t want to drop the dime.
You mean the rep grind that takes exactly TEN DAYS?
You can’t do it faster. And since you can do it in 16 minutes a day with a level 100 (as millions of us did), there is no reason to take more than TEN DAYS.
If rep is the only thing that is missing why not buy medallions of the legion or send out missions for them when they come up? You may can even find them on the AH.
But I will say that Pathfinder should have stopped at Part One. By that point, we all ran our mains through all of the storyline and through a crap ton of World Quests. We also leveled alts. One part was all that was needed.
Also: old Pathfinders should be toned down to Honored rep or something. Maybe Revered.