Exhausted from Exalted

I've got a guild member that says "exhausted" for "exalted." So if someone asks him how far he's into Cenarion Expedition, he says "I'm 9k from exhausted."

That sounds about right.

I just hit exhausted with Netherwing. Yes, I'm fishing for your congratulations for that was the suckfest of grinds. I know, I know, Blizz can't hand out Netherwing Drake mounts like they're pez, but dammit, there's got to be a better way dole out rare, desirable rewards without making a player loath to log in.

The mini-games you play to earn Netherwing reputation start out just fine. Collect 40 pollen? Sure, no problem. Beat disobedient orc peons with the booterang? I'm on it; I may even chuckle a bit as the boot slams into their thick skulls. Slay Netherwing fliers to collect 10 tokens. Okay, that one sucked from the git go because the drop rate eschewed the laws of probability. Some days I'd snag 4 or 5 of those tokens in a row, others I'd hit this insane dry spell where I'd kill 10 fliers and not see one token. Ah, the rage that caused.

The problem isn't so much doing any of these mini-games once, or twice, or even three times. It's doing them over and over and over, day after day after day until your eyes bleed and your hand shakes and your head slams repeatedly into your monitor. To make things worse, everyone and my grandma are doing these daily quests at the same time I am. I can't tell you how many peons escaped the heel of my booterang because some jackass swooped in front of me and popped the slacker before I could. Ditto with the pollen, the fliers, even the damn boars you need to kill to get the meat to poison the peons: all camped to high hell.

I had to take a break in the middle of the netherwing rep grind. It got to the point I couldn't bring myself to even log into the game. A week off did wonders for my attitude even if the mini-games still sucked. And now, I've got a Drake. Without hesitation, I'd trade that Drake for some exhausted status with Keepers or Cenarion. So much grinding to do, so little time.