Worst Grinds in Vanilla

[garicasha]

Allowed multiple choice, so people can vote for the High Warlord grind and 4-6 more of their favorites :-)

Edit: Forgot Bloodsail Buccaneers and Ravenholdt, vote for Timbermaw / Wintersaber if you want for them.

[Atherius]

Not the worst grind, but Stalwart's battlegear should be mentioned. The reputation part was the worst part pre-aq

[Deficineiron]

I do not think Rivendare is a grind so much as a lottery. I have read that the drop rate was 1/5000 early on (well into tbc). It seems like a grind is either fixed incremental progression per kill/turn-in (timbermaw, for example) or gear/item drop-based but with drops that will drop pretty reliably with, say, 50 attempts (usually much less). Gathering grinds are based on spawn points and some other factors as well.

With average 2 hours per run, you could make 12 stratholme ud attempts per day, x 365 = ~~4400 in one year without a break and still be unlikely to have the mount.

WSG and AB rep iirc would simply take x number of bg's with an average win rate of 50% (x being thousands? I don't remember the rep per bg/capture now). I suspect time-wise they were by far the worst. I don't recall if AV had a separate rep that was on a leash as well (iow you couldn't earn more than x rep per bg) if it was 16 per bg completed, 16 per flat captured in wsg, and you caputured avg. 1.5 flags per bg that is 40 rep per avg, and with 51000 rep needed to exampled....1250 wsg needed, with a conservative guess of 30 min per, only 625 hours! that is only 15 work weeks or 4 work months!

[Zequill]

I count having to do the old raid over and over again for Legendary, newbie and really good rare gear as a grind. Having a guild that raid twice a week for MC and BWL is fine, but when you have to add one night when AQ / Naxx is release, it might be hard to find one that fit your guild. Add ZG for enchant and AQ 20 for gear and you gonna spend most of your night in raid with your guild if you are planning on doing anything serious.

[Akasha64]

Hand of Justice has its own category....whaaat?? You could go into a BRD Emp Run and get it one shot if you were lucky. If anything, Briarwood reed is more difficult to get since more classes would like that. Not just caster dps, but also healers. So you end up with a situation that 6/9 classes in the game wants it. Hand of Justice is mostly for the rogues and dps warriors of the world, so only 2/9 classes, maybe 3/9 if you count a feral dps druid, but that is a very niche class/spec combo.

[Sencha]

I don't remember having to spend a lot of time grinding something in vanilla and I raided until AQ40 included. So maybe leveling if you consider this a grind?

[Akasha64]

With average 2 hours per run

I feel like a Baron run does not take that long though. Maybe half that time, like one hour or one hour and 15 minutes.

[Oneer]

Unsurprisingly the PvP rank option is the clear leader at the moment, I wouldn't personally consider lionheart helm pattern being a grind as the reality will just come down to a few MC/Ony resets of RNG to see which raid gets it and the rest of the server paying the crafting fee to the BS in that raid group.

[Axaion]

Solo pvp rank without a team of any sort, just you - solo queing up alone.

[Atherions]

Baron mount was almost impossible to get in vanilla and most servers did not have a single player with it. It is also in a different category than the rest as it is a cosmetic grind only.

[avitush]

Didn't you have to no life the game (or account share) for a good while to get GM and whatever the Horde equivalent was? I'd go with that, I think.

edit: and yeah resist gear in general could be a pain in the ass.

[Aleksej89]

Dont you mean BEST grinds? xD

Back in vanilla even the most tedious grinds were devilishly enjoyable and often even challenging to maximize.

[Charge me Doctor]

AV rep grind was kinda bad IMO

[funf]

Farming the money for the normal mount on your first character was hard and then grinding for the epic version wasn't done by every one.

[Deficineiron]

I feel like a Baron run does not take that long though. Maybe half that time, like one hour or one hour and 15 minutes.

right, once everyone is 60 it is probably pretty direct. the odds still are more in the state of 'lottery' than 'grind' I think.

[ZazuuPriest]

for someone who refused to buy the shit off the AH resist gear was hella annoying. At least with rep grids you have a set progression that you can see with every kill as opposed to random drops

[Oneer]

AV rep grind was kinda bad IMO

Bad enough that you always had 5-10 people in the starting area using a scripting program to jump every ~30 seconds to prevent the game kicking you for being afk to leech rep.

With a 2-monitor setup I think auto-pilot grinds like this will be more palatable for the above audience since you can just watch a movie or TV series while /following and doing some white hits on Galv / Belinda.

[Canield]

Baron mount will be difficult as loot trading wont be in. You wont be able roll need for a friend to feed it. Not many people are into farming undead side.

Pvp rank will depend heavily on how they partition the servers. If it's all one server, nightmare. If they use multiple servers it will depend on pop but be considerably easier.

Ab and wsg reps are pretty time consuming.

Worst consumes to farm will 100% be nature resist pots during aq40.

Depending on how much pvp goes on, and if viscidus can be cheesed: iron ore and solid stone farming will be in high demand.

[AeneasBK]

With average 2 hours per run, you could make 12 stratholme ud attempts per day, x 365 = ~~4400 in one year without a break and still be unlikely to have the mount.

Does the run not have to be 45 minutes; or can the mount drop regardless? Even so 2 hours per run seems a bit tardy?

Regardless of that I completely agree with your overall point about it not being a grind so much as a lottery.

ED: Sorry someone already raised it my bad I shoulda kept reading the thread *cough*

Anyway I voted Wintersaber, simply because GM/HW is a given, and it comes a long way behind in second place, but its still a way ahead of the rest of that list (barring maybe AB rep, pretty hard to rush that). Also after a while in Winterspring you start to get white out from all the snow

[Storfan]

Rank13/14 is BY FAR harder than any other mentioned for the simple reason that you cannot take a break half-way due to honor/standing/rank-decay.