If anything its REALLY nice to see they're not marching blindly forward in order to release Black Temple without thinking about other aspects of the game. I've been worried for a while that they're trying too hard to release Black Temple and that would be it until the next expansion.

Although it still feels far, far too early to release it given that not a soul has stepped into Hyjal yet.

I'd rather they'd stop introducing new content until the get the current content right :x

Raid content isn't perfect, but they did a damn fine job with five-man stuff. Reputations aren't an unbearable grind, the loot is solid and heroics (while needed better loot) offer a sense of progression.

I'd much rather see more accessible content in 2.1 rather than a raid instance not even the top raids will be ready for.

The idea is that you do BF to 66, do the HFP/ZM/Terokkar quests to 70, then have SMV/BEM/Netherstorm/Nagrand to gold grind quests.

It's /wrist then, or /wrist later when I'm wondering "Do I *really* want that epic mount?". The difference is in one case it's optional, and in the other case it isn't. Getting to 70 is non-optional (for the people we're talking about), and the epic mount is completely optional.

I really can't understand the people who repeatedly grind instances like BF. It just strikes me as a way to make yourself want to quit the game.

Strictly speaking, they're mostly soloable for the right class, but two is more fun (and it lets us non-enchanters get in on the act).

Also feeds the runecloth market for the OMG MUST SWITCH TO TAILORING market if you're doing a humanoid instance, and why not?

Dark Runes are also going for something criminal on our server (mostly paladins after their epic, I suspect). I need to find a second person and just clear and reset that room 5 times an hour for a few hours and make a killing.

Personally, I had a ton of fun running BF and other low level 5-mans repeatedly with my small crew of RL friends. I guess we had already run a bunch of the quests on Beta and enjoyed the game at a slow pace that way, and we were ready to experience more of the level 70 content, /shrug. The extra gold, at the time, was an accidental convenience, but I don't regret it at all looking back now.

However, I know that if you don't have a set crew to run 5-mans with repeatedly and break the tedium over vent, this could be a recipe for a quick account cancellation. Different strokes I guess.

I could make 100g+/h as a mage pre expansion. I can make 100g a day just browsing the AH for 10 mins.
Farm scryer rep in eclipse point and you'll net over 150g/h if you disenchant all the greens you get.

God, all these "quick & easy" solutions to making money anger me...

Great, you just told the world that you can make 100g by spending 10mins on ah, well how the hell does that help the rest of us?

The fact of the matter remains that the moneydrain called raiding requires an income, and however you put it, this income means some sort of timeconsuming and mind-numbingly boring farming to ~99% of the playerbase.

Imo, justifying a boring and repetitive task in a video game, a hobby for recreation and _fun_, is simply impossible. You can say "its needed", you can say "thats how it is", you can say "use the system, dont fight it" and so on, but you cant justify it.

Name something else thats fun/hobbyish... say watching a movie, how bout you _had_ to pause the video for 10 mins pr hour, it would clearly diminish the experience.

well, every hobby has it downsides. Sports have injuries, boring warmups, etc etc :p
The people I was adressing to said it was impossible for them to get 5k gold for an epic mount.
I never said time and gold sink of raiding was justified, I just said gold is easy to get if you put a little bit effort in it. If you want to achieve something anywhere you have to sacrifice something else, that's how it works.

That's how I did it for my reroll. Since we had three rogues rerolling priest, druid and warrior we never ever had problems getting a group together (or having fun in the TS ). When we finished Zangarmarsh, we were about 66/67. We did Terrokar rather quickly and didn't farm the Krypts and the Toomb intensively. We compensated this by doing 4 or 5 Sethekk Halls runs which pushed our faction with the Lower City to honored. I reached 70 before finishing Nagrand, our priest took a little bit longer due to the fact that he was just level 58 when he went through the portal.
I might add that since reaching 70 on friday I already got three heroic keys.

Looking back at what most folks discussed at the start of BC regarding attunements, I must say that getting revered with all factions may be archieved within 1-2 weeks, which is pretty fast I guess. If you plan accordingly, at that time you will have sufficient gear and the attunement to get to Kara as well. Attunement might only become a problem in terms of later raid dungeons (aka SS and later, though I predict that even attuning a member to SS will be a breeze for most raiding guilds within 3-4 month.

If I ever get bored enough to level another character I will take the same route again, if it is possible.

Regarding the main topic: I am looking really forward to new quests, I like the quest design in BC quite a lot, many interesting twists and gimmicks. It offers also a new source of income for those who don't own their epic flyer yet (or who need to put larger investments into their stuff, gems don't come cheaply these days).