A very interesting comment on Wowhead describing the grind, time consumption and dedication required to attain the High Warlord title during vanilla WoW: It's more like logging on a treadmill since if you stop, you get pulled back. And as you get closer to your goal, the treadmill goes faster and faster. The Rank 14 titles aren't about doing something difficult for a day. It was more about endurance and consistency. What we went through was 6 months of non-stop pvp. This means, you have 5-10 min meal breaks, you can sleep for 8 hours at first, but during the last month, you get to sleep for 4 hours each day (no such thing as weekends). And that's it. You don't have time for anything else. You don't even have enough time to sleep near the end. If you slept in day, you just reset your progress by a week or more. I can't think of anything in this game (or any other) that has these kinds of requirements. Some of the self-proclaimed hardcore raiding guilds (4-5 nights a week), wanted in the action thinking it was easy and decided to form a group against ours. After realizing that they couldn't farm more honor than us, they joined with us. The thing was, these guys that would raid 30-40 hours a week burned out after a month of doing the grind. (They stopped raiding to do this). They couldn't believe the dedication required to do this. A regular occurrence in the pvp team that I lead was that people would fall asleep on the keyboard while in a bg. We even had to exchange phone numbers so we could call the person to wake them up. Think of it this way - during the last month of my 6-month grind, the honor farmed was something like: Week 1 - 900K Week 2 - 940K Week 3 - 980K Week 4 - 1.2MM Given that I was in a premade, and we had instant queues, the rate that we could farm honor was about 10K per hour. So if we break it down to hours played: Week 1 - 90 Hours Week 2 - 94 Hours Week 3 - 98 Hours Week 4 - 120 Hours There's a total of 168 hours in a week. So, consider that you need to eat, sleep, go bathroom, shower, etc. Now the last week is 48 hours of time not pvping. If you spend every minute of the time not pvping to sleep, you would get 6.8 hours of sleep per day. But of course you need to eat, turn on the computer, and do other things, so you wind up with about 4 hours per day to sleep. Remember, I'm only talking about the last month of 6 months. Although, each week gets tougher and tougher, so let's say on average, we multiply the effort by 3. So the equivalent I would be thinking of would be 1206 (or 50 full 24 hour days) hours of effort in 3 months. Best thing I could think of is that Blizz allows you a 3 month time period to obtain 1206 hours of pvp, and each hour you miss per day, you would lose about 100 hours of progress. This would still be easier than the old system since you wouldn't need to compete with your own faction (nothing like pvping 100 hours that week to get top standing and have someone come in above you at 105, meaning you have to redo that week all over again). But I think this would more accurately reflect the time and effort involved in getting the HWL title without all the server drama that came with it.
Having a Grand Marshal title, (vanilla), on my main as well, I can attest to how tough this was. On my server we had around 30-45 mins que time, so meals and baths etc, were not an issue. As for grinding enough honor, I had to go to Orgrimmar in between bg´s, and snipe horde from the rooftops to be number 1. Needless to say, when I got rank 14 I didnt touch bg´s for several months after. No grind currently in-game even comes close to this one.
It was somewhat enjoyable most of the way, but when you reached rank 13 it became such a chore. It was pure persistence that got me through it, since I was so close at that point. Little did I know that it would take another 6 weeks before it was over. If I were presented with the same choice today, I would never even consider doing it. Another thing that deserves a mention is, that each opponent you faced gave diminished returns in honor, meaning that you could only kill a single player a set amount of time before he was worth practically nothing in honor gain. I used an addon to keep track this aspect, so in say WSG, you would "skip" the horde you had already grinded out and go for "fresh" targets. It was needed if you wanted to reach max on my server at least. Cant imagine how bad it was for horde, since they had very short que times.
I feel like I should have mentioned the rewards for the WSG/AB reps. It was just gear basically. Both factions had a selection of purple pieces that were pretty good along with some odds and ends such as bandages and food. Here's a full list if you're curious: WSG wow.gamepedia.com/Warsong_Gulch#Warsong_Gulch_items AB wow.gamepedia.com/League_of_Arathor#Rewards
You still can buy them from the NPCs at the BGs entrances iirc. I remember leveling some rerolls almost exclusively in PvP between BC and Cataclysm and I would buy those equipments along the way, like a pilgrimage of sorts (The Barrens-Ashenvale frontier, then Arathi Highlands, then Hillsbrad Foothills).
omg... YOU were Showtime!? I too played on Khadgar, on the Horde side to rank 11. Remember a Horde druid named Razorhoof? I played Warsong Gulch all the time.
I achieved rank 14 in the old days and had to confirm that I had no job , no social live , and I piss into the bottle , just to get that extra honor points .
I only got to Champion, dunno what rank that was 8-9? But never found a constant premade and was jumping from group to group so rank 14 was never a possibility for me and so I gave up on it and focused on PvE. :p
Isnt that always the case with these rare achievements? You grind for hundreds of hours, thousand even and at the end you realize that you did all that for something that doesn't even matter.
Not at all. I did the frostsaber mount quest back in the day (I did most of the work in vanilla, but I think I wasn't able to complete it before TBC dropped), and I cherished that mount. I absolutely loved all the opportunities to use it. Walking around in Dala back in WotLK displaying it was a pride. When Cataclysm dropped and all the world became open for flying, it saddened me. But of course I'd also done the Netherwing Drake grind, so.... At least I had a somewhat unusual flying mount.
I got the Winterspring Frostsaber in Vanilla on my Rogue. It took me about 2 months of grinding after the raid before bed. I remember my entire guild thought I was nuts and wasting time. You finally ding exalted... and then you have to buy the mount for 800 gold, or 900, whatever it was. But the best part was, I got his Winterfall Firewater, which gave you bonus attack power and made you giant. All my melee friends in the guild begged me for "more giant water" for progression. And I had hundreds. Good times. I still always use that mount on my Rogue, even though I got an original Bear mount from ZA. Thanks for including it in your list, even though it's a decade plus later, it feels validating to have someone tell me it was difficult :P
Ah the Winterspring reputation... I used to sit every weekend, put on a movie on one screen and grind the day away. Took me awhile but I managed to get it pre-cata....
I completed my Winterspring Frostsaber + Darnassus rep through Evergreen Pouches, before cloth turn ins were introduced, as a dwarf by the end of April 2005 (started mid December 2004) - Patch 1.4 and the honor system came about 2 weeks after that I remember and I started to grind for Grand Marshall soon as it hit. I got Grand Marshall about 4 months thereafter which luckily made it faster/easier and not everyone knew what was happening but despite having taken about the same time, was WAY less mind-breaking than the WS/NE grind, believe me.
The hardest grind for me was Battlemaster title. It had tons of luck tied to it. You actually had to put forth tons of effort in BGs to cap, win games, get kills and do the objectives. It took me two years of almost straight PvP and I finally got it in 2010.
Totally agree, hardest part of it atleast for me was, AV tower recaps... being a horde it was painfull to do, but nowadays i think Khan title is slightly harder to do
while 1 or 2 achievs in every bg was/is hard, the rest is grinding. Gladiator/hero, cutting edge pre nerf are the top lvl of any achievs imaginable aside from world firsts
Yep, battlemaster and Khan are extremely hard to get now than say back in 2010/WOTLK where you could sign up as full premade still, but then blizzard nerf fun...:( Glad I got BM back then.
I don't play WoW and never have, but I still watch most of madseasons Videos because of how well the content is explained. Especially like the Videos involving lore. Keep up the amazing work :)
I cannot emphasize enough how gruelling the Rank 14 grind was on Kel’Thuzad. I have vivid memories of being in high school and my “weekends” would be logging on at 3:30pm on Friday night and the logging off around 7:00am Saturday morning to sleep for a couple hours then be back at it by 10:00am. That last month of getting to High Warlord wasn’t just endurance, it was sheer force of will. It was competitive but in such a great way that I even got another account after I was done to go and play Alliance and hang out with the folks I slaughtered along the way. Although, there’s still a dent in the wall from a week where I almost de-ranked because of being sick, in bed, on medication and I was so frustrated. Over a decade later and those dents still remind me of the insane and fun grind Rank 14 was.
I scrolled down moments after starting the video, and read the comment LITERALLY in sync with him saying it, I have never felt so high in my entire life lol
I remember being one of only 5 people (iirc) on my original realm of Khaz'Goroth that obtained the Wintersaber mount in Vanilla. I had made an A3 poster filled with dots I'd fill in with a marker for each quest completed, broken down into how many per reputation level. I still remember it being divided into 2 columns and the entirety of the right column was the Revered->Exalted grind. But every day doing an average of 10 hand-ins slowly got me to reach that goal.
I grinded winterspring frostsaber during TBC. About half of it pre-nerf and then finished after 2.3. I played on a small server and never saw anyone else with the mount. That felt nice. After 2.3 the reputation for quests went up from 75 to 250 and to 350 for rampaging giants. After that you could grind it in ~2-3 days of full-time grind. It was a really nice idea from Blizzard to have something grindable like this. Back then you could explore Azeroth and do what ever you wanted. If this is what you wanted to do, then go for it. Along with Baron Rivendare grind, I think these hard-to-get items were what made TBC great. Please mention Baron Rivendare mount grind in your next video!
Still leaving off the Timbermaw to exalted grind in vanilla before the repeatable quest or bead turn-ins. Back then, the only way to get rep was to kill the enemy furbolgs. There was one village of them in Felwood by the tunnel and a couple in Winterspring. You got 1 rep for killing the regular enemy and 5 rep for killing the single enemy boss that spawned on the entire map. To make it worse, one of the best enchants in the game back then came from the Timbermaw, so there were tons of people farming the same furbolgs.
my brother got rank 13 (field marshall) on his warrior. of course, my father, and one of my father's friend also played on his account. AND all the guild helped. when it was alliance and horde guild premades, they had a pact to let each other win, so they could grind fast. because if they got serious, the bg could go on 2 or 3 hours each...
If you shared a computer back then, there was no way you could tell who had played the character. Everyone has their own PC nowadays :P Laptops couldn't do gaming and most computer screens were ~25kg CRT's. Interesting that it was allowed to wintrade in BG's.
TLPD was probably one of my luckiest mounts. I spent a lot of time in retail farming mounts in MoP/WoD/Legion but I still remember finding TLPD on my way up to ulduar, no camping, just running across him. I killed him in one shot and was so worried that he had fallen somewhere that I couldn't reach him to loot. Fortunately, I was able to, and I love having it. Good luck to everyone going for it!
One of my proudest moment in WoW was obtaining the Epic Zul’farak 2H sword. Took me years of running that dungeon. Getting the same 1h sword over and over. The day it dropped I will never forget, I was on follow making a bowl of ramen. (My typical lunch from 15-18 from playing wow non stop lmao.) I came back after cleaning the trash after using the NPC to blow up the door. When the sword dropped I almost didn’t know what to do because my grind stopped. It took me a while to equip both together, but I’m proud to own it.
Wow... Time-Lost Proto-Drake. I'll never forget that grind. In high school, during WOTLK, I spent the entire winter vacation camping it with a /target macro. Had to have been 90+ hours that week... found Vyragosa a few times. Unfortunately I didn't find him, and continued on with my life. Later in the expansion, I was flying through Storm Peaks, and actually flew INTO him! Turns out, my /target macro was mispelled the whole time. Ended up dismounting by accident, falling and living with 5% HP, but killed him for the mount.
I did the Rank 14 grind. At first I was casually PvP'ing solo and got to rank 8 but I kept going deciding 10 would be easy enough to attain. When I got rank 10, the same as my mate, I thought I would stop but then I got invited to a group of other high rank players and thought I'd get to 11 to out do my mate. Rank 8 to 10 was slower than any rank before but after joining the group gaining honour sped up and I flew past rank 10 and 11. So there I was at rank 12 still with a strong group and a dig decision, "Do I go for Rank 14?" well I had the people and the time so the answer was yes. Rank 12 to 14 took about 6 weeks, 6 weeks of doing PvP 18 to 20 hours a day and sleeping in between battlegrounds so 10 to 15 minute naps for a Horde player on Al'Akir. I remember near the end of the journey and my rank 13 bar was 90% and my team mates are giving me congrats for making Rank 14, I can finally unwind and rest, sweet sweet sleep. So imagine my horror when I wake up to a 99% bar and I had to play for 1 more week. As I got closer and closer to Rank 14 my emotional drive to reach Rank 14 was purely egotistical, I am among the less than 1% of players, I am famous, in a sense. My Rank 14 achievement has followed me, I quit WoW in TBC unhappy with the cut to 40man raids and each subsequent MMO I played my name was recognized. I was playing Overwatch one evening, long after I quit MMO's and 9 years after I quit WoW and someone in the game asked if I was the same Dredj from Al'Akir. That guy knowing me after 9 years tells me Rank 14 was worth it, however I definitely would not do it again.
I still remember the names of the first r14 and other good pvp players on my server. One of those was the cousin of my friend, who made it to the 1st r14 on the Alliance side with his warrior. He looked like a typical wow nerd: skinny, not really good looking, with glasses and pimples. But a clever and intelligent guy. Not shy at all. I had a huge respect for him. Ingame he was a legend. And I was very proud to know him and play in his premades. I personally never reached a higher rank than r11.He quit after Vanilla, but the whole server still remembered him till I also quit in 2011. Still remember those glorious days like they have been yesterday.
I remember rank 14 was negotiated sometimes within the faction so you don't have that hard competition. Myself achieved rank 9 only grinding Alterac for reputation to obtain Don Julio's Band (and it felt like doing it 24/7 already)
I remember the 24/7 battlegrounds grinds. Been there, played for days and days and that kept going for weeks and weeks. I reached the top of possible ranks and then I was done. But it was really really fun back then, every battleground was time consuming but fun as hell. Sooo many kills! Oh and open pvp also was a thing, was fun as hell! I still got my characters from that time frozen at level 60 because I stopped playing. Thanks for the video!
I made Warlord and gave up on High Warlord. I played roughly 10 to 15 hours everyday for about 2 months. By the time I was half way through Warlord I ran out of steam. Pushing 15+ hours a day, other players right where I was at slowing me down if they had more time to dump into it. Plus I was a priest and had Benediction. The HW staff wasn't a huge upgrade. It was hard and my team was great. We had roughly 10 HWs made by the end of vanilla. It was insane and it was a blast. Respect to all Warlords and High Warlords.
The original Thorium Brotherhood grind was pretty bad. Raids were busy using Dark Iron Ore for crafting so you had to farm it yourself. The only good way to farm it was in the Burning Steppes where it shared spawn points with Rich Thorium Veins. I remember it took me 6 weeks, 4-6 hours a night and you could really only farm it at a good rate in the wee hours of the night. Getting exalted earned you the recipe for the Dark Iron Boots, which was the best fire resist boots in the game at the time.
Heh, I've been watching your content due to the raw nostalgia I feel when looking back on my days in vanilla. I haven't played the game since Cataclysm, but enjoy the memories. On my server (Kel'Thuzad), we too had a lopsided population of pvpers and I too ground my way to rank 10. It remains the thing I'm most proud of in game! Well... that and the magic of the alt horde mage my girlfriend at the time and I had... hunting down guildy alts and ganking them to watch the show in guild chat on our mains was some of the most fun we could have possibly hoped for. It started as a joke, but they got so *angry* we kinda felt like they wouldn't appreciate it if we actually told them why they kept getting hunted by the same mage... I mean it didn't slow us down... but still... Heh... those were the days...
I tried to go tor the Insane in the Membrane Title, but realized I really didn't have the time or patience to grind it all out. However, I realized that only after I became hated with the Steamwheedle Cartel. For a long time, I could not go to any of their hubs which was often a pain. I eventually had to grind and buy cloth to get my rep back.
I don't know if anyone else has mentioned, but Time-Lost has never been obtainable via Black Market Auction House. The mounts available from BMAH are tcg mounts and rare drop mounts from dungeons, raids, world bosses, etc. Never guaranteed drops from rare spawns (Poseidus, Aeonaxx, TLPD).
God, I remember when I got the Time-Lost Proto-Drake, was just doing my dailies in the area and I saw him fly around when flying from 1 spot to the next, never have I been so lucky in my life. I believe I was Realm third for it too, or close to it.
I got my TLPD by mere chance. In Cata, I decided to take a quick break from questing with my night elf mage and focus on JC dailies in Dalaran (there was no real point to it, other than 'completionist'). I had a quest to go after Iron Dwarves, and I thought about heading down to Howling Fjord (I knew there were mobs that counted down there). I figured Storm Peaks was closer, though, so went there. Spotted the TLPD flying around the Maker's Engine (I think that's what it's called) and immediately said 'nope, screw JC daily! gonna get me a proto-drake!' I was very surprised to find it uncontested; I had no struggle to try and tag it first. Dismount in mid-air, Slow Fall and Arcane Barrage to tag it, and once I touched down, took it out. I still like to fly around on him every so often, but he's so damn big he doesn't let me through most doorways... :/
I friend of mine was minning some ores with his unleveled DK when something hit him from behind. It was the Time-Lost Proto Drake, so he killed it, loot the mount and couldn't use it because it was for max level only. It happened before mounts were account shared.
Hey Madseason. I'm not sure if it was just my own personal experience, but leveling the secondary professions (minus first aid) was kinda long and time consuming as well. I remember leveling my fishing took me like months and cooking was a pain because you'd get 5 skill points from one recipe that would turn yellow or green, so you only had 1 red left and it required mats that were a pain to farm. I think some of the primary profs had it bad too. when i first tried blacksmithing i felt like i coulndn't level it at all.
Time lost proto drake... 3 months of constant camping, and then when I took it down... was immediately surrounded by nine players... clapping and dancing... I miss those fun days...
Back in vanilla I was I think rank 7 or 8 and then got tired of that job. It was so time consuming. I am glad the wintersaber guys are in this list. Pre that one glitch that lets you teleport to him directly, barons mount from strat was an insane grind as well. I probably spent weeks farming him and never saw it before I quit wow.
Vanilla wintersaber trainers was 5/10 rep per turn in. I was revered by the time they changed it to 25/50 in TBC. Cata changed it to a daily i think. I was ecstatic when they bumped it to 25/50 and furious when they changed it to a daily.
I'm willing to bet I spent 100+ hours on the Time-Lost. There was a nice adrenaline dump when my targeting macro finally locked on though, similar to when you win a 2v1 in arena. Still one of my favorite mounts especially for my DK that snagged it.
Back in wotlk I mained a human death knight. I was level 77 or 78, had just bought cold weather flying and was heading to the storm peaks. When I arrived I noticed some people gathered on their flying mounts in the air, so I went to see why they were there, and that's when I saw the rare time lost proto drake. It immediately occurred to me that those people were there because they were trying to get within range to pull the mob down to the ground. Me being a blood dk, which at the start of wrath were very good at soloing difficult enemies, I too followed the mob to a small ledge that I could death grip him from. All those people watched me solo that thing, and when it was dead I reveived whispers saying how lucky I was. I didn't even have enough to afford the mount skill to use it, I remember having the reins in my bank for months after until finally saving enough gold to buy 280% flying. I'm still amazed how lucky I was to just wander into such a rare spawn while entering the zone for the first time as a leveler.
I spent what must've been months looking for the Time-Lost Proto-Drake on my Tauren shammy and just lost it when the target macro actually hit something. I died from dismounting too high in the air but used reincarnation to make sure it didn't get away. Self-res came through in the clutch so many times. It wasn't the rarest mount ever when I got it in Cata but people would still say something now and again
I feel like i remember rank 14 being the top guy in honor points in your faction, meaning you had to be #1 in the faction for that week to get grand marshal. Which was pretty insane grind in itself.
Even before they nerfed the rep grind again in WoD it still took me a long time to get Conqueror. If I remember you needed like 200+ wins in AB, 400+ wins in WSG, and I forget how many in AV. It was pretty nuts and I almost lost my sanity during it, but it was worth it at the end. And that is absolutely nothing compared to the vanilla HWL grind, I can't even begin to imagine the mental strain that took.
The highest rank I managed to get, was "Knight", on my hunter. GB's, were a huge grind, back in those days, because they could take hours, for one, and you were not automatically put in the group/raid, you had to get an invite, and could spend the entire BG, not getting an invite. AB, was never-ending, sometimes.
the hardest thing back in the day was waiting on respawn timers. I remember as a young night elf finally able to start to train pets I spent days finding my way to the horde lands because I heard about a rare Lion pet (with a fast attack speed) and i cant remember but i think it was something ridiculous like a 6 hour spawn and i spent several days camping and trying to get my Lion. but wow did I look great in my alliance guild with my sweet lion
Rank 14 grind was hard. Sometimes the thought of logging in to grind another 16-18 hours of AB/WSG while leading would make me sick, but you couldnt take a day off cause then someone else would grind more honor than you and you could end up grinding a extra week for the top ranks. 3 months 16-18 hours everyday leading a premade i got Rank 14 High Warlord and i was on top of the world. People on the server logged in early with me to see when i bought my rank 14 weapons. Crazy and fun time, for my own sanity i would not do it again.
One of the toughest grinds was rank grinding in vanilla , I got to rank 10 / title was , had to do a crap load of pvp , miss a couple of days of pvp , or go on holidays you would most likely drop a rank or two & couldn’t kill civilians cause you would get dishonourable kills & drop honor , fun times , mad props for anyone who got to rank 14
Time Lost Proto-Drake farmer here. By far hardest "grind" ever for me - up to that point. Took about 4 months spending every free moment in WOW patrolling Storm Peaks. During that time once found it's freshly killed corpse and wanted to quit. But since I am crazy I continued on and finally got it and was pretty cool, rare mount at the time. Don't know about now - probably since mounts are shared through account you can see a lot more of it. Compared to that mount, obtaining Red Proto-Drake was easy.
I remember playing a good 20 WSG back in early game before my alliance team won. We really did have, at best, a 1 in 10 win ratio. That made grinding that rep A NIGHTMARE!
the time lost proto drake reminds me of the rare gryphon spawn camp for the eyepatch of plunder in Everquest. I wonder if that was inspiration for the Time-Lost P.D.
Wsg and ab marks turn ins were available only in vanilla, in tbc it was completely removed and you were getting 35p for wsg flag cap and 10p for each 200p in ab. Title conqueror was added in 2.1(bt patch) and that was waaay after mark turn ins. I did this purely on tbc and it took me around 8 months of varried spent hours per day. Honor kills I gathered along the way was something around 29k
Yep! My first mount ever was the Black War Tiger. It took honor plus 60 tokens from each bg to get. Hate that Blizz has changed it so that it looks grey now.
I was Grand marshal warrior back then, it was so mutch grind, i payed a friend to play on my warrior when i was working at the days. I played at stormscale EU and some times it was a pvp guild called Warders Allience guild they took me in to join them, when i hit rank 14 it was a great feeling, got alot of whispers and i was feeling i was a king at the whole server, but when i look back i was very noobish at pvp but i dont regret anything, it was very fun in a way and also frustrating.
Ah the Time Lost Proto. I was able to get him during my preparation for final exams. I've camped for 3 weeks straight 24/7 with an addon that played a crazy loud sound when NPC appeared. So, I just let my WoW client run with some DIY space clicker (to avoid going offline) for 3 full weeks and I was lucky enough to get my Time Lost Proto Drake which is still my the most favorite mount.
Way back in the day I grinded forever trying to get the time-lost protodrake. I ended up coming upon it when I wasn't actively searching it out on my main and I got it on an alt, before the days when mounts were shared across the account (I think?) I haven't played since the end of MoP though, but watching your videos MadSeason has me wanting to get my sub back! The time I'd spend questing and in the lore would probs keep me busy for months. Not sure how I feel about BfA changes to the world though, rip Teldrassil, which was definitely one of my favorite places in WoW.
I'm proud to have been the first Warlord horde side on Dark Iron when this came out. I had a bad injury that kept me home for a year and I did this with the time lol..
I played Khadgar horde back in vanilla! You are right about that grind for wsg and AB being easier horde side. I pvp’d a ton leveling and was actually exalted with WS outriders in my late 50s. But I spend about a third of my leveling time leveling through pvp. Then I did the rank grind up to 11 before taking a break before TBC.
The beehemoth rare spawn is a tamable hunter pet black bumble bee that only spawns during a world quest (1 of 5 ) And the world quest may only spawn if there is a a warfront in that area (bfa). Being the only black bumble bee tame-able appearance it’s very sought after for having the combination of mortal wounds /lust /ferocity and unquie model. This pet took me 2 years of constantly checking the wow companion app for the world quest to even appear ! I have only seen a hand full of other hunters on my server obtain the pet. Not worth a video but worth sharing
We had 3 guys in my old guild that made High Warlord and kept it for quite a while. It was pretty cool because that character became so well known on the server that people would notice my guild name and they would run up to me and asked if I knew "Pradarian" personally. Closest i will ever come to being a celebrity. Vanilla was a different time.
Only somewhat related, but back when cataclysm was being released, along with the new races, I was planning on making a Worgen Druid. And I had decided he would be my main. So I spent ages grinding every single pet and mount that was tradeable so I could give it to him, along with gold, bags, heirlooms, and everything that could give him a head start. Didn't buy a single thing, and it felt so rewarding when I finally collected all of the pets (Hyacinth, whelps, etc.). I'm kind of sad that I don't have really any more grinds to do. Not that the grind itself is fun, but the reward from the hard work is what made it worth it (and the extra gold I made from selling my other Hyacinth Macaw since I get 2 back-to-back).
High Warlord Corrupt from Maelstrom Horde here; Rank 14 grind is and will always be the most ridiculous grind in the game. 110k-120k Honor a day (17-18 hours of play a day for a least 2 1/2 - 3 months)
One of the hardest grinds in this game is probably archaeology, specifically, the Troll Sword and the Scepter of Azq'Azir. It's not on the level of the original rank 14 titles, or the difficult reputations, but the main issue is that it's entirely RNG based, with the mount being a 1/150 chance, and the sword being 1/1000.
I got to rank 10 Lieutenant Commander on Firetree server alliance side. Had to stop there because it was just too insane for me to go any further, I was happy to just look cool with the blue set reward!
Awesome video! Loved remembering this stuff from back when I was playing. Draenor was my server. And I played wow this whole time without ever knowing about the wintersaber mount!! And I played alliance lol and quested thru winterspring as well!! Thanks!
The hours upon hours I wasted trying to get that proto drake back in WoTLK, spamming the auto target macro as I patrolled it's spawn areas/paths. Only ever saw the corpse of it once.
Man I was watching this video and right at the start when you were talking about grinding my wife walked in and saw your character grinding on another and she asked me what the hell I was watching! Of course she does not know anything about wow so all I could come up with is "it's not what it looks like" but that did not help so thanks a lot for getting me in trouble! Ha ha ha
I did that wintersabre rep grind. Such a reward walking around IF showing off that mount. Cant believe it only takes 20 quests now. Almost makes me feel insulted even though I haven't played since wrath of the lich king.
The Wintersaber grind broke me. Being in a raiding guild, I just didn't have a large chunk of time to grind the rep. I got a little over halfway to Exalted and then TBC was released, at which point I just threw my hands up. Not getting the Epic Frostsaber mount or ever seeing Baron Rivendare's Dreadsteed drop are two of my biggest regrets from vanilla WoW.
I once saw the baron mount drop but someone else won it, to be fair i wasnt that pissed about it. I was more focused on getting the flask recepie in the dungeons, one time i made a specific grp for it and went to scarlet side and said straight before anyone joined and reminded if it drops i get it. It did drop and someone else rolled need as this was before masterloot, he won it and i got super pissed. I think I raved a bit in the guild chat because a few weeks later my guild gave me the recepie after it dropped in their guild group and I was super happy for months.
I did the rank 14 grind on an Alliance sided server too (99 to 1 A:H ratio). The first thing you did was get a party. It's a lot easier to grind if you win fast and efficiently. Then you'd queue, the earlier in the day the better. An early queue meant you were first in line to get in to Alterac Valley, which was the big honor farm. Then you'd just run WSG and AB, going for quick wins, waiting for AV to pop. Once in AV you'd farm kills and objectives until the cap kicked in, then you'd push to end it. That would take about an hour or so. Then if you were lucky, you'd get a second AV game. I never finished my path to rank 14, but 3 out of our 5man group got it. I switched to PVE at rank 12, eventually reaching the 4 horsemen before 2.0 hit and killed the raiding side of our guild, which was on rocky ground because of drama with the leader, his girlfriend and our main tank (as usual).
I remember getting to Rank 12 on Horde back in vanilla and yeah, grind is a word that still doesn’t do that hellfest any favors. Really wanted that High Warlord gear for hunter since it would’ve helped with BWL LOL
Could you explain the reasoning behind your tmog? Especially since you mention the tabard's relevance, I feel like there's also more to it besides just being a bunch of random gear
I had the "Conqueror" title back in early TBC. Still remember random people asking how i got that title since they never saw it before. I mean, it wasn't that hard, i just played battlegrounds all day because i loved it. I think today it's not a special title anymore, but back in those days when only a few titles were available, this surely was one of the coolest. People would just randomly make me battleground leader and say "plz make us win k tnx"
Winter spring Frost Saber took a minimum of one full month to grind way back in the day. You had to get the quest then get a little cub. You has to keep doing specific daily quests for it. Then it would grow up and you would get the mount. There was a raptor quest that was almost as long and hard if I remember right. I did both. Then Blizzard nerfed it, then they did it again.
I watched this video right after I was done playing Darkest Dungeon and I thought that the game was still running in the background when I heard the game's OST.
Did grind my troll priest to rank 14 back in the days. Maintained it for two consecutive weeks just to annoy the hell out of the second Horde pvp team (they were disrepectful asshats that would share accounts to grind 24/7). Aaaah the good old days.
An idea would be to make these older and harder mounts and dropps easier, there should be a unique repeatable quest in an expansion that lets you earn a cache that has a low chance to give any 1 of those items. However they come from a chest that has a low chance instead; which will give 1 of those items, pets, mounts, etc.. It will still be as hard but saves you running all over the place if you want a chance. You can still get them normally but to avoid campers you can use this idea instead to save the fuss, although much harder to get a specific drop.
Back in vanilla, a while before BC hit, I was on my server's top alliance PvP team and we were getting one member to rank 14 per week after a while. I got up to rank 12 because I was bored and off work due to illness but the time commitment was nuts. The team was gung-ho to get me to rank 14 too but once I hit Marshal, my wife said one sentence ("I want my husband back") and I was done. I was permanently burnt out of PvP in WoW after that and honestly, I haven't really been able to get really into PvP in any other MMO since (despite Guild Wars 2 and ESO having fun large scale siege warfare).
My solution to getting the TLPD is farming it at about 3 AM. Nobody is online, just make a group with some friends, go around northrend killing all the rares you can find and after each kill go back and hunt it again.
There is one other Time-Lost protodrake problem, it can get killed by npc's too. Which happened to me. Those blue protodrakes in one of it's patrol zones attack it.
![The Story of Kel'Thuzad - Part 1 of 2 [Lore]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/19oIz1LNsc0/mqdefault.jpg)
A very interesting comment on Wowhead describing the grind, time consumption and dedication required to attain the High Warlord title during vanilla WoW:
It's more like logging on a treadmill since if you stop, you get pulled back. And as you get closer to your goal, the treadmill goes faster and faster.
The Rank 14 titles aren't about doing something difficult for a day. It was more about endurance and consistency.
What we went through was 6 months of non-stop pvp. This means, you have 5-10 min meal breaks, you can sleep for 8 hours at first, but during the last month, you get to sleep for 4 hours each day (no such thing as weekends). And that's it. You don't have time for anything else. You don't even have enough time to sleep near the end. If you slept in day, you just reset your progress by a week or more.
I can't think of anything in this game (or any other) that has these kinds of requirements. Some of the self-proclaimed hardcore raiding guilds (4-5 nights a week), wanted in the action thinking it was easy and decided to form a group against ours. After realizing that they couldn't farm more honor than us, they joined with us. The thing was, these guys that would raid 30-40 hours a week burned out after a month of doing the grind. (They stopped raiding to do this). They couldn't believe the dedication required to do this.
A regular occurrence in the pvp team that I lead was that people would fall asleep on the keyboard while in a bg. We even had to exchange phone numbers so we could call the person to wake them up.
Think of it this way - during the last month of my 6-month grind, the honor farmed was something like:
Week 1 - 900K
Week 2 - 940K
Week 3 - 980K
Week 4 - 1.2MM
Given that I was in a premade, and we had instant queues, the rate that we could farm honor was about 10K per hour. So if we break it down to hours played:
Week 1 - 90 Hours
Week 2 - 94 Hours
Week 3 - 98 Hours
Week 4 - 120 Hours
There's a total of 168 hours in a week. So, consider that you need to eat, sleep, go bathroom, shower, etc.
Now the last week is 48 hours of time not pvping. If you spend every minute of the time not pvping to sleep, you would get 6.8 hours of sleep per day. But of course you need to eat, turn on the computer, and do other things, so you wind up with about 4 hours per day to sleep.
Remember, I'm only talking about the last month of 6 months. Although, each week gets tougher and tougher, so let's say on average, we multiply the effort by 3.
So the equivalent I would be thinking of would be 1206 (or 50 full 24 hour days) hours of effort in 3 months.
Best thing I could think of is that Blizz allows you a 3 month time period to obtain 1206 hours of pvp, and each hour you miss per day, you would lose about 100 hours of progress.
This would still be easier than the old system since you wouldn't need to compete with your own faction (nothing like pvping 100 hours that week to get top standing and have someone come in above you at 105, meaning you have to redo that week all over again).
But I think this would more accurately reflect the time and effort involved in getting the HWL title without all the server drama that came with it.
Having account shared 2 accounts to High Warlord (neither of which being my own) can confirm.
The R14 grind is insane.
Having a Grand Marshal title, (vanilla), on my main as well, I can attest to how tough this was. On my server we had around 30-45 mins que time, so meals and baths etc, were not an issue. As for grinding enough honor, I had to go to Orgrimmar in between bg´s, and snipe horde from the rooftops to be number 1. Needless to say, when I got rank 14 I didnt touch bg´s for several months after. No grind currently in-game even comes close to this one.
Sounds like how I played during the summer in Classic, BC,and Wotlk. I truly had no life.
i have a question for you people that did the grind. did you enjoy it, or do you think it was worth doing it?
It was somewhat enjoyable most of the way, but when you reached rank 13 it became such a chore. It was pure persistence that got me through it, since I was so close at that point. Little did I know that it would take another 6 weeks before it was over. If I were presented with the same choice today, I would never even consider doing it. Another thing that deserves a mention is, that each opponent you faced gave diminished returns in honor, meaning that you could only kill a single player a set amount of time before he was worth practically nothing in honor gain. I used an addon to keep track this aspect, so in say WSG, you would "skip" the horde you had already grinded out and go for "fresh" targets. It was needed if you wanted to reach max on my server at least. Cant imagine how bad it was for horde, since they had very short que times.
I feel like I should have mentioned the rewards for the WSG/AB reps. It was just gear basically. Both factions had a selection of purple pieces that were pretty good along with some odds and ends such as bandages and food. Here's a full list if you're curious:
WSG wow.gamepedia.com/Warsong_Gulch#Warsong_Gulch_items
AB wow.gamepedia.com/League_of_Arathor#Rewards
Give some love to Aeonaxx
MadSeasonShow yes you could turn in the badges for HP and rep!
Asmongold uploads: I sleep
MadSeason uploads: real shit?
I never finish WSG or AB but I did max rep in AV and like you I love wearing that tabard and the mount from that pvp zone as well
You still can buy them from the NPCs at the BGs entrances iirc. I remember leveling some rerolls almost exclusively in PvP between BC and Cataclysm and I would buy those equipments along the way, like a pilgrimage of sorts (The Barrens-Ashenvale frontier, then Arathi Highlands, then Hillsbrad Foothills).
omg... YOU were Showtime!?
I too played on Khadgar, on the Horde side to rank 11. Remember a Horde druid named Razorhoof? I played Warsong Gulch all the time.
the horde in khadgar like 15% only in server was really bad
Now that's a name that I haven't seen in a while. I remember you well...one of those slippery flag runners if I recall correctly!
what a heartwarming coincedance
I was in horde my name is Drfox
The World of Warcraft bringing players together, one memory at a time.
I achieved rank 14 in the old days and had to confirm that I had no job , no social live , and I piss into the bottle , just to get that extra honor points .
I only got to Champion, dunno what rank that was 8-9? But never found a constant premade and was jumping from group to group so rank 14 was never a possibility for me and so I gave up on it and focused on PvE. :p
I've never wondered about your transmog. I actually thought you were just wearing bis fury warrior gear
I love rare mounts that are hard to obtain. You appreciate them so much but once you get them, you completely forget about them :(
Isnt that always the case with these rare achievements? You grind for hundreds of hours, thousand even and at the end you realize that you did all that for something that doesn't even matter.
Well, the Winterspring Frostsaber had the very unique attribute of being an epic mount that only required Apprentice Riding.
Malte Diekmann sense of accomplishment is a greater feeling.
Not at all. I did the frostsaber mount quest back in the day (I did most of the work in vanilla, but I think I wasn't able to complete it before TBC dropped), and I cherished that mount. I absolutely loved all the opportunities to use it. Walking around in Dala back in WotLK displaying it was a pride. When Cataclysm dropped and all the world became open for flying, it saddened me.
But of course I'd also done the Netherwing Drake grind, so.... At least I had a somewhat unusual flying mount.
I got the Winterspring Frostsaber in Vanilla on my Rogue. It took me about 2 months of grinding after the raid before bed. I remember my entire guild thought I was nuts and wasting time.
You finally ding exalted... and then you have to buy the mount for 800 gold, or 900, whatever it was. But the best part was, I got his Winterfall Firewater, which gave you bonus attack power and made you giant. All my melee friends in the guild begged me for "more giant water" for progression. And I had hundreds. Good times.
I still always use that mount on my Rogue, even though I got an original Bear mount from ZA.
Thanks for including it in your list, even though it's a decade plus later, it feels validating to have someone tell me it was difficult :P
Ah the Winterspring reputation... I used to sit every weekend, put on a movie on one screen and grind the day away. Took me awhile but I managed to get it pre-cata....
i wish i still had all these screenshots from vanilla,tbc and wotlk.......so many memories................
I completed my Winterspring Frostsaber + Darnassus rep through Evergreen Pouches, before cloth turn ins were introduced, as a dwarf by the end of April 2005 (started mid December 2004) - Patch 1.4 and the honor system came about 2 weeks after that I remember and I started to grind for Grand Marshall soon as it hit. I got Grand Marshall about 4 months thereafter which luckily made it faster/easier and not everyone knew what was happening but despite having taken about the same time, was WAY less mind-breaking than the WS/NE grind, believe me.
The hardest grind for me was Battlemaster title. It had tons of luck tied to it. You actually had to put forth tons of effort in BGs to cap, win games, get kills and do the objectives. It took me two years of almost straight PvP and I finally got it in 2010.
i will always say that battlemaster was the hardest achievement in wow period, no matter what they do nowadays nothing will come closer to that
Totally agree, hardest part of it atleast for me was, AV tower recaps... being a horde it was painfull to do, but nowadays i think Khan title is slightly harder to do
while 1 or 2 achievs in every bg was/is hard, the rest is grinding. Gladiator/hero, cutting edge pre nerf are the top lvl of any achievs imaginable aside from world firsts
Yep, battlemaster and Khan are extremely hard to get now than say back in 2010/WOTLK where you could sign up as full premade still, but then blizzard nerf fun...:( Glad I got BM back then.
BM title is definitely one of the harder ones. Especially when it had the BGs reputations req.
That oof part killed me
I don't play WoW and never have, but I still watch most of madseasons Videos because of how well the content is explained. Especially like the Videos involving lore. Keep up the amazing work :)
I cannot emphasize enough how gruelling the Rank 14 grind was on Kel’Thuzad.
I have vivid memories of being in high school and my “weekends” would be logging on at 3:30pm on Friday night and the logging off around 7:00am Saturday morning to sleep for a couple hours then be back at it by 10:00am. That last month of getting to High Warlord wasn’t just endurance, it was sheer force of will. It was competitive but in such a great way that I even got another account after I was done to go and play Alliance and hang out with the folks I slaughtered along the way.
Although, there’s still a dent in the wall from a week where I almost de-ranked because of being sick, in bed, on medication and I was so frustrated. Over a decade later and those dents still remind me of the insane and fun grind Rank 14 was.
No, not that kind of grinding
Not Goldshire grinding
I scrolled down moments after starting the video, and read the comment LITERALLY in sync with him saying it, I have never felt so high in my entire life lol
ahahaha this just happened to me 11 months later :D
In that monotone voice too, lol, so cringe.
I remember being one of only 5 people (iirc) on my original realm of Khaz'Goroth that obtained the Wintersaber mount in Vanilla. I had made an A3 poster filled with dots I'd fill in with a marker for each quest completed, broken down into how many per reputation level. I still remember it being divided into 2 columns and the entirety of the right column was the Revered->Exalted grind. But every day doing an average of 10 hand-ins slowly got me to reach that goal.
Ah, throwback to that incredibly long Wintersaber grind. It was so worth it though, WSFS is such a beautiful mount.
I grinded winterspring frostsaber during TBC. About half of it pre-nerf and then finished after 2.3.
I played on a small server and never saw anyone else with the mount. That felt nice.
After 2.3 the reputation for quests went up from 75 to 250 and to 350 for rampaging giants.
After that you could grind it in ~2-3 days of full-time grind.
It was a really nice idea from Blizzard to have something grindable like this. Back then you could explore Azeroth and do what ever you wanted.
If this is what you wanted to do, then go for it. Along with Baron Rivendare grind, I think these hard-to-get items were what made TBC great. Please mention Baron Rivendare mount grind in your next video!
I love coming back to this video after MadSeason’s Rank 14 grind on classic
Still leaving off the Timbermaw to exalted grind in vanilla before the repeatable quest or bead turn-ins. Back then, the only way to get rep was to kill the enemy furbolgs. There was one village of them in Felwood by the tunnel and a couple in Winterspring. You got 1 rep for killing the regular enemy and 5 rep for killing the single enemy boss that spawned on the entire map. To make it worse, one of the best enchants in the game back then came from the Timbermaw, so there were tons of people farming the same furbolgs.
Commenting because I support you. Your voice is soothing, and always tests my WoW knowledge. Your voice helps me sleep, and I love the topics.
my brother got rank 13 (field marshall) on his warrior. of course, my father, and one of my father's friend also played on his account. AND all the guild helped. when it was alliance and horde guild premades, they had a pact to let each other win, so they could grind fast. because if they got serious, the bg could go on 2 or 3 hours each...
If you shared a computer back then, there was no way you could tell who had played the character. Everyone has their own PC nowadays :P
Laptops couldn't do gaming and most computer screens were ~25kg CRT's.
Interesting that it was allowed to wintrade in BG's.
TLPD was probably one of my luckiest mounts. I spent a lot of time in retail farming mounts in MoP/WoD/Legion but I still remember finding TLPD on my way up to ulduar, no camping, just running across him. I killed him in one shot and was so worried that he had fallen somewhere that I couldn't reach him to loot. Fortunately, I was able to, and I love having it. Good luck to everyone going for it!
Always a bright spot in my day to watch one of your videos man :D
Indeed! It is uplifting to see one of Madseasons videos in your subscribe-feed :)
One of my proudest moment in WoW was obtaining the Epic Zul’farak 2H sword. Took me years of running that dungeon. Getting the same 1h sword over and over. The day it dropped I will never forget, I was on follow making a bowl of ramen. (My typical lunch from 15-18 from playing wow non stop lmao.) I came back after cleaning the trash after using the NPC to blow up the door. When the sword dropped I almost didn’t know what to do because my grind stopped. It took me a while to equip both together, but I’m proud to own it.
Wow... Time-Lost Proto-Drake. I'll never forget that grind.
In high school, during WOTLK, I spent the entire winter vacation camping it with a /target macro. Had to have been 90+ hours that week... found Vyragosa a few times. Unfortunately I didn't find him, and continued on with my life.
Later in the expansion, I was flying through Storm Peaks, and actually flew INTO him! Turns out, my /target macro was mispelled the whole time. Ended up dismounting by accident, falling and living with 5% HP, but killed him for the mount.
I did the Rank 14 grind. At first I was casually PvP'ing solo and got to rank 8 but I kept going deciding 10 would be easy enough to attain. When I got rank 10, the same as my mate, I thought I would stop but then I got invited to a group of other high rank players and thought I'd get to 11 to out do my mate. Rank 8 to 10 was slower than any rank before but after joining the group gaining honour sped up and I flew past rank 10 and 11. So there I was at rank 12 still with a strong group and a dig decision, "Do I go for Rank 14?" well I had the people and the time so the answer was yes.
Rank 12 to 14 took about 6 weeks, 6 weeks of doing PvP 18 to 20 hours a day and sleeping in between battlegrounds so 10 to 15 minute naps for a Horde player on Al'Akir. I remember near the end of the journey and my rank 13 bar was 90% and my team mates are giving me congrats for making Rank 14, I can finally unwind and rest, sweet sweet sleep. So imagine my horror when I wake up to a 99% bar and I had to play for 1 more week.
As I got closer and closer to Rank 14 my emotional drive to reach Rank 14 was purely egotistical, I am among the less than 1% of players, I am famous, in a sense. My Rank 14 achievement has followed me, I quit WoW in TBC unhappy with the cut to 40man raids and each subsequent MMO I played my name was recognized. I was playing Overwatch one evening, long after I quit MMO's and 9 years after I quit WoW and someone in the game asked if I was the same Dredj from Al'Akir.
That guy knowing me after 9 years tells me Rank 14 was worth it, however I definitely would not do it again.
I still remember the names of the first r14 and other good pvp players on my server. One of those was the cousin of my friend, who made it to the 1st r14 on the Alliance side with his warrior. He looked like a typical wow nerd: skinny, not really good looking, with glasses and pimples. But a clever and intelligent guy. Not shy at all. I had a huge respect for him. Ingame he was a legend. And I was very proud to know him and play in his premades. I personally never reached a higher rank than r11.He quit after Vanilla, but the whole server still remembered him till I also quit in 2011. Still remember those glorious days like they have been yesterday.
pics or didnt happen
liar
I got to rank 13 and gave up. Getting to 13 was insane, but the leap from 13 to 14 was pure hell. Couldnt hack it while raiding 3 times a week.
Is no one going to mention the fact that he just did it with Jania at 0:20? Edit: I know, commenting on a six year old video.
I remember rank 14 was negotiated sometimes within the faction so you don't have that hard competition.
Myself achieved rank 9 only grinding Alterac for reputation to obtain Don Julio's Band (and it felt like doing it 24/7 already)
Darkest dungeon music is so fitting for a video about intense grinding. Nice video.
I totally remember doing the report grind for the frost saber! You totally brought me back in time with this! Enjoyed the video my man
I remember the 24/7 battlegrounds grinds. Been there, played for days and days and that kept going for weeks and weeks. I reached the top of possible ranks and then I was done.
But it was really really fun back then, every battleground was time consuming but fun as hell. Sooo many kills! Oh and open pvp also was a thing, was fun as hell!
I still got my characters from that time frozen at level 60 because I stopped playing.
Thanks for the video!
I made Warlord and gave up on High Warlord. I played roughly 10 to 15 hours everyday for about 2 months. By the time I was half way through Warlord I ran out of steam. Pushing 15+ hours a day, other players right where I was at slowing me down if they had more time to dump into it. Plus I was a priest and had Benediction. The HW staff wasn't a huge upgrade. It was hard and my team was great. We had roughly 10 HWs made by the end of vanilla. It was insane and it was a blast. Respect to all Warlords and High Warlords.
The original Thorium Brotherhood grind was pretty bad. Raids were busy using Dark Iron Ore for crafting so you had to farm it yourself. The only good way to farm it was in the Burning Steppes where it shared spawn points with Rich Thorium Veins. I remember it took me 6 weeks, 4-6 hours a night and you could really only farm it at a good rate in the wee hours of the night. Getting exalted earned you the recipe for the Dark Iron Boots, which was the best fire resist boots in the game at the time.
Heh, I've been watching your content due to the raw nostalgia I feel when looking back on my days in vanilla. I haven't played the game since Cataclysm, but enjoy the memories. On my server (Kel'Thuzad), we too had a lopsided population of pvpers and I too ground my way to rank 10. It remains the thing I'm most proud of in game! Well... that and the magic of the alt horde mage my girlfriend at the time and I had... hunting down guildy alts and ganking them to watch the show in guild chat on our mains was some of the most fun we could have possibly hoped for. It started as a joke, but they got so *angry* we kinda felt like they wouldn't appreciate it if we actually told them why they kept getting hunted by the same mage... I mean it didn't slow us down... but still... Heh... those were the days...
I tried to go tor the Insane in the Membrane Title, but realized I really didn't have the time or patience to grind it all out.
However, I realized that only after I became hated with the Steamwheedle Cartel. For a long time, I could not go to any of their hubs which was often a pain.
I eventually had to grind and buy cloth to get my rep back.
I don't know if anyone else has mentioned, but Time-Lost has never been obtainable via Black Market Auction House. The mounts available from BMAH are tcg mounts and rare drop mounts from dungeons, raids, world bosses, etc. Never guaranteed drops from rare spawns (Poseidus, Aeonaxx, TLPD).
God, I remember when I got the Time-Lost Proto-Drake, was just doing my dailies in the area and I saw him fly around when flying from 1 spot to the next, never have I been so lucky in my life. I believe I was Realm third for it too, or close to it.
I got my TLPD by mere chance. In Cata, I decided to take a quick break from questing with my night elf mage and focus on JC dailies in Dalaran (there was no real point to it, other than 'completionist'). I had a quest to go after Iron Dwarves, and I thought about heading down to Howling Fjord (I knew there were mobs that counted down there). I figured Storm Peaks was closer, though, so went there.
Spotted the TLPD flying around the Maker's Engine (I think that's what it's called) and immediately said 'nope, screw JC daily! gonna get me a proto-drake!' I was very surprised to find it uncontested; I had no struggle to try and tag it first. Dismount in mid-air, Slow Fall and Arcane Barrage to tag it, and once I touched down, took it out.
I still like to fly around on him every so often, but he's so damn big he doesn't let me through most doorways... :/
I friend of mine was minning some ores with his unleveled DK when something hit him from behind. It was the Time-Lost Proto Drake, so he killed it, loot the mount and couldn't use it because it was for max level only. It happened before mounts were account shared.
Hey Madseason. I'm not sure if it was just my own personal experience, but leveling the secondary professions (minus first aid) was kinda long and time consuming as well. I remember leveling my fishing took me like months and cooking was a pain because you'd get 5 skill points from one recipe that would turn yellow or green, so you only had 1 red left and it required mats that were a pain to farm. I think some of the primary profs had it bad too. when i first tried blacksmithing i felt like i coulndn't level it at all.
Time lost proto drake... 3 months of constant camping, and then when I took it down... was immediately surrounded by nine players... clapping and dancing... I miss those fun days...
Back in vanilla I was I think rank 7 or 8 and then got tired of that job. It was so time consuming. I am glad the wintersaber guys are in this list. Pre that one glitch that lets you teleport to him directly, barons mount from strat was an insane grind as well. I probably spent weeks farming him and never saw it before I quit wow.
Vanilla wintersaber trainers was 5/10 rep per turn in. I was revered by the time they changed it to 25/50 in TBC. Cata changed it to a daily i think. I was ecstatic when they bumped it to 25/50 and furious when they changed it to a daily.
I'm willing to bet I spent 100+ hours on the Time-Lost. There was a nice adrenaline dump when my targeting macro finally locked on though, similar to when you win a 2v1 in arena. Still one of my favorite mounts especially for my DK that snagged it.
one of the channels that got me back into WoW! keep it up!
I just love your videos about WoW :-) Makes me almost cry whenever we walk with you to the old days of WoW :-) Keep up the good work mate!
Back in wotlk I mained a human death knight. I was level 77 or 78, had just bought cold weather flying and was heading to the storm peaks. When I arrived I noticed some people gathered on their flying mounts in the air, so I went to see why they were there, and that's when I saw the rare time lost proto drake. It immediately occurred to me that those people were there because they were trying to get within range to pull the mob down to the ground. Me being a blood dk, which at the start of wrath were very good at soloing difficult enemies, I too followed the mob to a small ledge that I could death grip him from. All those people watched me solo that thing, and when it was dead I reveived whispers saying how lucky I was. I didn't even have enough to afford the mount skill to use it, I remember having the reins in my bank for months after until finally saving enough gold to buy 280% flying. I'm still amazed how lucky I was to just wander into such a rare spawn while entering the zone for the first time as a leveler.
I spent what must've been months looking for the Time-Lost Proto-Drake on my Tauren shammy and just lost it when the target macro actually hit something. I died from dismounting too high in the air but used reincarnation to make sure it didn't get away. Self-res came through in the clutch so many times. It wasn't the rarest mount ever when I got it in Cata but people would still say something now and again
i love how in every shot of arathi you are getting your ass kicked by the horde xD
I feel like i remember rank 14 being the top guy in honor points in your faction, meaning you had to be #1 in the faction for that week to get grand marshal. Which was pretty insane grind in itself.
Even before they nerfed the rep grind again in WoD it still took me a long time to get Conqueror. If I remember you needed like 200+ wins in AB, 400+ wins in WSG, and I forget how many in AV. It was pretty nuts and I almost lost my sanity during it, but it was worth it at the end. And that is absolutely nothing compared to the vanilla HWL grind, I can't even begin to imagine the mental strain that took.
That Darkest Dungeon OST.... horror awaits with the grind! "Slowly, Gently, that is how life is taken"
So many awesome quotes from that game. One of the best indie games I've played
The highest rank I managed to get, was "Knight", on my hunter. GB's, were a huge grind, back in those days, because they could take hours, for one, and you were not automatically put in the group/raid, you had to get an invite, and could spend the entire BG, not getting an invite. AB, was never-ending, sometimes.
the hardest thing back in the day was waiting on respawn timers. I remember as a young night elf finally able to start to train pets I spent days finding my way to the horde lands because I heard about a rare Lion pet (with a fast attack speed) and i cant remember but i think it was something ridiculous like a 6 hour spawn and i spent several days camping and trying to get my Lion. but wow did I look great in my alliance guild with my sweet lion
Rank 14 grind was hard. Sometimes the thought of logging in to grind another 16-18 hours of AB/WSG while leading would make me sick, but you couldnt take a day off cause then someone else would grind more honor than you and you could end up grinding a extra week for the top ranks. 3 months 16-18 hours everyday leading a premade i got Rank 14 High Warlord and i was on top of the world. People on the server logged in early with me to see when i bought my rank 14 weapons. Crazy and fun time, for my own sanity i would not do it again.
One of the toughest grinds was rank grinding in vanilla , I got to rank 10 / title was , had to do a crap load of pvp , miss a couple of days of pvp , or go on holidays you would most likely drop a rank or two & couldn’t kill civilians cause you would get dishonourable kills & drop honor , fun times , mad props for anyone who got to rank 14
Time Lost Proto-Drake farmer here. By far hardest "grind" ever for me - up to that point. Took about 4 months spending every free moment in WOW patrolling Storm Peaks.
During that time once found it's freshly killed corpse and wanted to quit. But since I am crazy I continued on and finally got it and was pretty cool, rare mount at the time.
Don't know about now - probably since mounts are shared through account you can see a lot more of it.
Compared to that mount, obtaining Red Proto-Drake was easy.
Love my winter spring frosty. Took me a couple of weeks to get him and the only thing I’ve ever seriously ground for
Great walk down memory lane!!! Thanks !!!
I remember playing a good 20 WSG back in early game before my alliance team won. We really did have, at best, a 1 in 10 win ratio. That made grinding that rep A NIGHTMARE!
There was a player in the Guild I was apart of on Warsong in Vanilla. He was a rogue named Joji. He obtained Grand Marshall for a week.
the time lost proto drake reminds me of the rare gryphon spawn camp for the eyepatch of plunder in Everquest. I wonder if that was inspiration for the Time-Lost P.D.
You forgot to mention that Time lost proto drake used to be a 310% mount. Only a few mounts were 310% at that time.
that's not true
Wsg and ab marks turn ins were available only in vanilla, in tbc it was completely removed and you were getting 35p for wsg flag cap and 10p for each 200p in ab. Title conqueror was added in 2.1(bt patch) and that was waaay after mark turn ins. I did this purely on tbc and it took me around 8 months of varried spent hours per day. Honor kills I gathered along the way was something around 29k
That Darkest Dungeon music though
the bg tokens were also use to buy black war mounts before being removed in WOTLK
Yep! My first mount ever was the Black War Tiger. It took honor plus 60 tokens from each bg to get. Hate that Blizz has changed it so that it looks grey now.
I was Grand marshal warrior back then, it was so mutch grind, i payed a friend to play on my warrior when i was working at the days. I played at stormscale EU and some times it was a pvp guild called Warders Allience guild they took me in to join them, when i hit rank 14 it was a great feeling, got alot of whispers and i was feeling i was a king at the whole server, but when i look back i was very noobish at pvp but i dont regret anything, it was very fun in a way and also frustrating.
Ah the Time Lost Proto. I was able to get him during my preparation for final exams. I've camped for 3 weeks straight 24/7 with an addon that played a crazy loud sound when NPC appeared.
So, I just let my WoW client run with some DIY space clicker (to avoid going offline) for 3 full weeks and I was lucky enough to get my Time Lost Proto Drake which is still my the most favorite mount.
Way back in the day I grinded forever trying to get the time-lost protodrake. I ended up coming upon it when I wasn't actively searching it out on my main and I got it on an alt, before the days when mounts were shared across the account (I think?) I haven't played since the end of MoP though, but watching your videos MadSeason has me wanting to get my sub back! The time I'd spend questing and in the lore would probs keep me busy for months. Not sure how I feel about BfA changes to the world though, rip Teldrassil, which was definitely one of my favorite places in WoW.
I'm proud to have been the first Warlord horde side on Dark Iron when this came out. I had a bad injury that kept me home for a year and I did this with the time lol..
very constructive
I played Khadgar horde back in vanilla! You are right about that grind for wsg and AB being easier horde side. I pvp’d a ton leveling and was actually exalted with WS outriders in my late 50s. But I spend about a third of my leveling time leveling through pvp. Then I did the rank grind up to 11 before taking a break before TBC.
The beehemoth rare spawn is a tamable hunter pet black bumble bee that only spawns during a world quest (1 of 5 )
And the world quest may only spawn if there is a a warfront in that area (bfa). Being the only black bumble bee tame-able appearance it’s very sought after for having the combination of mortal wounds /lust /ferocity and unquie model. This pet took me 2 years of constantly checking the wow companion app for the world quest to even appear ! I have only seen a hand full of other hunters on my server obtain the pet. Not worth a video but worth sharing
We had 3 guys in my old guild that made High Warlord and kept it for quite a while. It was pretty cool because that character became so well known on the server that people would notice my guild name and they would run up to me and asked if I knew "Pradarian" personally. Closest i will ever come to being a celebrity. Vanilla was a different time.
Only somewhat related, but back when cataclysm was being released, along with the new races, I was planning on making a Worgen Druid. And I had decided he would be my main. So I spent ages grinding every single pet and mount that was tradeable so I could give it to him, along with gold, bags, heirlooms, and everything that could give him a head start. Didn't buy a single thing, and it felt so rewarding when I finally collected all of the pets (Hyacinth, whelps, etc.).
I'm kind of sad that I don't have really any more grinds to do. Not that the grind itself is fun, but the reward from the hard work is what made it worth it (and the extra gold I made from selling my other Hyacinth Macaw since I get 2 back-to-back).
High Warlord Corrupt from Maelstrom Horde here; Rank 14 grind is and will always be the most ridiculous grind in the game. 110k-120k Honor a day (17-18 hours of play a day for a least 2 1/2 - 3 months)
It completely depended on your server and side. So Yes, it did take that long on my server. Thanks though.
One of the hardest grinds in this game is probably archaeology, specifically, the Troll Sword and the Scepter of Azq'Azir. It's not on the level of the original rank 14 titles, or the difficult reputations, but the main issue is that it's entirely RNG based, with the mount being a 1/150 chance, and the sword being 1/1000.
I got to rank 10 Lieutenant Commander on Firetree server alliance side. Had to stop there because it was just too insane for me to go any further, I was happy to just look cool with the blue set reward!
Every single fucking year I say "I'm done with WoW" now with Blizzcon around the corner I can anticipate my return. God help me...
How are you doing now?
Awesome video! Loved remembering this stuff from back when I was playing. Draenor was my server. And I played wow this whole time without ever knowing about the wintersaber mount!! And I played alliance lol and quested thru winterspring as well!! Thanks!
O and how did you get your transmog?! Like why do you use those off colors etc.?
The hours upon hours I wasted trying to get that proto drake back in WoTLK, spamming the auto target macro as I patrolled it's spawn areas/paths. Only ever saw the corpse of it once.
Man I was watching this video and right at the start when you were talking about grinding my wife walked in and saw your character grinding on another and she asked me what the hell I was watching! Of course she does not know anything about wow so all I could come up with is "it's not what it looks like" but that did not help so thanks a lot for getting me in trouble! Ha ha ha
I did that wintersabre rep grind. Such a reward walking around IF showing off that mount. Cant believe it only takes 20 quests now. Almost makes me feel insulted even though I haven't played since wrath of the lich king.
Truly digging the polka.
The Wintersaber grind broke me.
Being in a raiding guild, I just didn't have a large chunk of time to grind the rep. I got a little over halfway to Exalted and then TBC was released, at which point I just threw my hands up. Not getting the Epic Frostsaber mount or ever seeing Baron Rivendare's Dreadsteed drop are two of my biggest regrets from vanilla WoW.
I once saw the baron mount drop but someone else won it, to be fair i wasnt that pissed about it. I was more focused on getting the flask recepie in the dungeons, one time i made a specific grp for it and went to scarlet side and said straight before anyone joined and reminded if it drops i get it. It did drop and someone else rolled need as this was before masterloot, he won it and i got super pissed. I think I raved a bit in the guild chat because a few weeks later my guild gave me the recepie after it dropped in their guild group and I was super happy for months.
I did the rank 14 grind on an Alliance sided server too (99 to 1 A:H ratio).
The first thing you did was get a party. It's a lot easier to grind if you win fast and efficiently. Then you'd queue, the earlier in the day the better. An early queue meant you were first in line to get in to Alterac Valley, which was the big honor farm. Then you'd just run WSG and AB, going for quick wins, waiting for AV to pop. Once in AV you'd farm kills and objectives until the cap kicked in, then you'd push to end it. That would take about an hour or so. Then if you were lucky, you'd get a second AV game.
I never finished my path to rank 14, but 3 out of our 5man group got it. I switched to PVE at rank 12, eventually reaching the 4 horsemen before 2.0 hit and killed the raiding side of our guild, which was on rocky ground because of drama with the leader, his girlfriend and our main tank (as usual).
I remember getting to Rank 12 on Horde back in vanilla and yeah, grind is a word that still doesn’t do that hellfest any favors. Really wanted that High Warlord gear for hunter since it would’ve helped with BWL LOL
Classic is coming.. so what do I do 1st when I get near lv60.. Wintersabers! 😁
Could you explain the reasoning behind your tmog? Especially since you mention the tabard's relevance, I feel like there's also more to it besides just being a bunch of random gear
I had the "Conqueror" title back in early TBC. Still remember random people asking how i got that title since they never saw it before. I mean, it wasn't that hard, i just played battlegrounds all day because i loved it. I think today it's not a special title anymore, but back in those days when only a few titles were available, this surely was one of the coolest. People would just randomly make me battleground leader and say "plz make us win k tnx"
Winter spring Frost Saber took a minimum of one full month to grind way back in the day. You had to get the quest then get a little cub. You has to keep doing specific daily quests for it. Then it would grow up and you would get the mount. There was a raptor quest that was almost as long and hard if I remember right. I did both. Then Blizzard nerfed it, then they did it again.
I watched this video right after I was done playing Darkest Dungeon and I thought that the game was still running in the background when I heard the game's OST.
Did grind my troll priest to rank 14 back in the days. Maintained it for two consecutive weeks just to annoy the hell out of the second Horde pvp team (they were disrepectful asshats that would share accounts to grind 24/7). Aaaah the good old days.
Did that Wintersaber quest in its original format. Was a rough grind. Took me many nights of straight grinding at lvl 60.
An idea would be to make these older and harder mounts and dropps easier, there should be a unique repeatable quest in an expansion that lets you earn a cache that has a low chance to give any 1 of those items. However they come from a chest that has a low chance instead; which will give 1 of those items, pets, mounts, etc..
It will still be as hard but saves you running all over the place if you want a chance. You can still get them normally but to avoid campers you can use this idea instead to save the fuss, although much harder to get a specific drop.
Back in vanilla, a while before BC hit, I was on my server's top alliance PvP team and we were getting one member to rank 14 per week after a while. I got up to rank 12 because I was bored and off work due to illness but the time commitment was nuts. The team was gung-ho to get me to rank 14 too but once I hit Marshal, my wife said one sentence ("I want my husband back") and I was done. I was permanently burnt out of PvP in WoW after that and honestly, I haven't really been able to get really into PvP in any other MMO since (despite Guild Wars 2 and ESO having fun large scale siege warfare).
the most relaxing videos u make MadSeasonshow keep it up
My solution to getting the TLPD is farming it at about 3 AM. Nobody is online, just make a group with some friends, go around northrend killing all the rares you can find and after each kill go back and hunt it again.
oof...
K_A_LA_K_A the mighty OOOOOF returns
There is one other Time-Lost protodrake problem, it can get killed by npc's too. Which happened to me. Those blue protodrakes in one of it's patrol zones attack it.