The Great Divide

In a recent comment on my post about Netherwing Eggs, Valdesta shared some experience of grinding Netherwing rep and the impact it has on friends around you. Most notably the jealous reaction you get from some folks.

No doubt!

First off, just getting the epic gryphon definitely caused a bit of a stir. People immediately began looking at me as (A) selfish, and (B) someone who should be supplying gold for whoever needs it.

Selfish? Maybe. Sometimes. But not for getting the epic flight. That's just a down right sweet functional upgrade, as the speed helps me with things such as getting to instances on time faster, and also gathering more herbs and minerals in a shorter amount of time. Sure the purple gryphon armor looks cool, especially as I try for a purple theme for Amava whenever possible, but the speed is what its all about.

Personal lending bank? Not no way, not no how. I help people grind mats they need for whatever crafting stuff they want to do. I run instances with enchanters and pass on just about any boss drops and all DE shards so they can have the mats. I share my ideas about making gold to help guildies and friends become self-sufficient. I donate reasonable amounts of gold to the guild to help with things like bank vault tabs or tank repair bills. I tip my guild enchanters. Hansomly. I buy all my crafted items off of guildies whenever possible, so they can get the skill points. And I tip them. But handouts? or loans? Nope.

Some people genuinely showed happiness for me when I got the epic flyer, but lots of the (A) and (B) reactions.

Then there's the folks who know what I'm doing when they see me listed as being in Netherwing Ledge. Namely, grinding the daily quests to get me to Exalted. There's two guildies that anytime they log in and see me out there, they immediately chime in on guild chat "ok 70's, time to get together and help clear eachother's group quests" as a passive aggressive shot at me. They never used to say stuff like that before my Netherwing grind, and I never see comments like that if I'm not in Shadowmoon Valley.

And then you get to the one who may or may not have shown the biggest reaction. He used to be on his main toon every day. We used to run lots of dungeons together, and even started a healthy rivalry on seeing who can top the damage meters while respecting tank aggro. We worked nicely together. The first instance we ran together was a bit rough with some personality clash, but after that, we sorted things out, and he was a great friend to run dungeons with, and a great member of the guild. Since the day after he learned I got the epic mount, about 2 weeks ago, I've seen him online one time.

I'm not sure what happened. It probably isn't related to the mount, but based on his reaction when he saw me out in Netherwing Ledge and asked about the epic flight, there's a small part of me that thinks he switched to a different toon with gathering professions and is grinding the money for his flight. Perhaps I'm just too much of a conspiracy queen.

But if you're reading this, M, please, come back. I miss you. The guild misses you. I hope your absence is due to something awesome like an extended trip to Hawaii.

The real "fun" will be once I get my Nether Drake, which is coming up really quickly, as I'm at about 15K out of 21K through revered, which will most likely ding this weekend (unless I completely abandon my Netherwing grind and focus on Cenarion Expedition grind to get the helmet glyph to satisfy the last of BRK's requirements). Then I'll get to see some real reactions as I soar around Outlands on my dragon.