Top 10 Most Painful and Worst Grinds in WoW 

My wife moved out when I was chasing the High Warlord title, would have divorced me if I kept at it. My life was literally work, PVP, and maybe 5 hours a sleep per night, for months. WoW didn't seem important anymore when she was gone, so we reconciled. We are happily married 10 years later. Hell of a grind.

My GM wasn't playing for like 3 months in wrath and he had logged out in storm peaks. When he finally logged back in there was something in his way and he couldn't see around it, so he killed it and it turned out to be the Time-Lost Proto Drake.

I still remember in vanilla you would join an AV, play for hours, log off, go to sleep, go to work, then come home to play, and it would still be the same AV going from the previous day!

I turned on the RU-vid subtitles and they had me dying laughing through the whole video. Amazing

Something basically every vanilla player had to do: Grind 1000 gold for the Epic Mount. I remember it taking literal weeks of grinding. And every single player basically had to do it

I wouldn't call Time Lost farming or grinding, as you never continually mindlessly killed enemies. You just waited, really.

Hero of Shattrah was pretty awful too. You had to kill like 12 thousand spiders for those venom sacs in Terrokar.

Wow! As someone who joined at the end of legion it’s crazy to learn that there used to not be enough quests in the world to get to max level.

winterspring frostsaber from vanilla was a heck of a grind too

I did numerous 48h ”shifts” farming for rank 14, stopped studying at the university - and when i finally had one week left playing, i didn’t even had to be first, 3rd best would have been enough to rank up. The last week was WSG weekend, multiple new players started that week, many of them made schedules with friends or siblings so that they could play 24/7 - after almost 72 hour straight, with a few minor breaks, I couldn’t stay awake any further, went to bed. Woke up almost 24 hours later, I had lost so much time during that sleep - I finished 7th that week, and in fact, lost some rank. To compensate, I would have to play just as much, but for two weeks now. I couldn’t handle it, and quit.

There's one detail you missed about the Time-lost Proto-drake: it shares spawn with another rare spawn (Vyragosa). So if Vyragosa spawns, you have to kill her before the protodrake could (maybe) spawn.

*"LIVE TO WIN!"*

Hiru you didn't mention that back when the Insane title was NOT nerfed, you had to get Shendralar rep to exalted as well. Which meant grinding librams and pristine black diamonds, which took the longest to complete. Glad that inscription was a thing to make darkmoon cards. And I also don't remember it ever requiring to become exalted with Bloodsail buccaneers

As someone who was part of a group attempting Rank 14 in vanilla, I personally never got sick of WSG. For us it became sort of like speedrunning. We weren't just mindlessly charging at dudes, we were optimizing our time for the fastest tokens with the most kills per game possible, constantly adjusting strategies, learning when it's more efficient to lose quick rather than win slow, abusing any minor detail we could find (green whelp armor lol) and really just pushing it. For us, WSG was no different to Dota or LoL. Sure, it's one map, but you can spend a looot of time perfecting the game. edit: I should mention that we did not actually GET Rank 14. Efficiency did not beat raw playtime back in vanilla.

Small correction. They had spell skills in game but they were hidden. In SFK you got a curse debuff that actually reduced random skills by 100. This includes all spell schools.

don't speak of TLPD... I'm already getting music flash-backs, Skoll a lot of times, and Vyragosa at every turn! D:

You think you do but you don't

i have the vanilla marshal title and i can tell you that wsg and ab are still the best bgs

Just adding couple more. Captured firefly (TBC). 0.07% chance to drop from Bogflare Needlers. Luckily I got this pet when leveling my first character. And one more. Grinding stratholme for Deathcharger's reins. I actually made a lot of money by disenchanting loot from the stratholme runs!

2:14 ^^ what the hell is he talking about? I just ran UBRS, Scholo and Strat over and over again until I dinged 60

I enjoyed weapon skills. I remember punching a rhino in the face over and over in Northrend to get the knuckle sandwich achievement.

next: top 10 grass patches in wow

The Insane title is my shining achievement in wow. And I did it pre nerf too.

Vial of the Sands was a monumental pain in the arse, took me 6 months to get that

i miss attunement quests. bc was so much fun. vanila was fucking aweosme questing as well.

Number 8 is completely untrue. There were MORE than enough quests to ding max levels, the issue was that blizzard intended you to supplement the gaps with instance quests. If you did all instance/zone quests you would hit 60 with about 2 zones and an instance to spare.

I still don't understand why people thought the weapon skill grind was so bad, at least in comparison to others. Just stack int and fight the highest level mob you could safely take. Intellect increased the rate at which weapon skills grew (maybe so int wasn't 100% useless for warriors and rogues back then?) High level mobs caused it grow faster.

during vanilla there was an unkillable mob you could level your weapon skill with ease. in blasted lands.

You should do 10 Most Painful and Worst Battle Pets in WoW.

In mists, while questing in the hinterlands I got the disgusting oozeling without trying or even knowing of its existence, although they probably increased its drop rate

While the honor system was rough to get to the highest level, it also made some of my most favorite memories with friends when we pvp'd together every single day for hours on end. I absolutely loved it, and I miss it.

The "Salty" title is a good honorable mention. Most of it isn't bad but the golden coins can break your will since you can get the same few over and over and "The One That Didn't Get Away" will reduce you to tears with its 0.01% drop rate fish.

Emperor Shahao reputation from Mists of Pandaria was pretty awful. It was mostly killing elite yaunglol until your fingers hurt all for cosmetic rewards and a mount. I never completed it.

Did Netherwing in 16hrs straight of farming, then fell asleep. Woke up and did Shatari Skyguard in 12hrs. Never again.

Emperor Shaohao rep. I salute players with the heavenly golden serpent mount because that shit took TIIIIME.

My personal favorite grind that took a bunch of time was farming rep to get Talbuks. Still one of my favorite mounts c:

grinding for the nether drake or nether ray took awhile too

I hit rank 10 in about 2-3 months and then went home for Christmas vacation (was in college) and then came back and was at rank 7. At that point I gave up lol. Damn vacation. I should have stayed and missed Christmas with my family! lol

Ummm... insane title involved a lot more than just that. Remember how after you ground out Bloodsail rep, you had to get Ravenholdt, Shandralar, Darkmoo Faire and all the Goblin factions to exalted.... sheesh. Bloodsail was the easy part!

rank 14 hours per day was understated by miles the majority had to play upto 20 hours a day and would often pay chinese farmers to play anytime they slept

The hardest grind I ever undertook.... there are two, actually. The Timbermaw rep grind in vanilla was insane. There were no turn-ins, no repeatable quests. All rep was gained by killing Timbermaw. I think you got like 2 points per regular Timbermaw and 5 points per boss. There were one or two bosses. The Frostsaber Trainer rep to get the reins of the Winterspring Frostsaber was ridiculous. However, there is an easy, yet expensive, way to get the Frostsaber. On Horde-side, the Frostsaber is the Venomhide Ravasaur from Un'Goro. That one takes 21 easy days to get. So, if you go horde-side, you can easily get the Venomhide and then if you go back to Alliance, you have the Frostsaber. I'll add one other... in vanilla, I wanted a Crimson Whelpling. You get those by grinding whelps in Wetlands. I killed 20K whelps before one finally dropped the Crimson Whelpling.

Hearing all these grinds together in a 10 minute video makes me ask: "Why did I play this game for so long again?"

Keep up the work man, you make me miss playing wow and the old times..

I was still in school by the time of release. Became one of the first rank 14 players in PvP in europe. That was one hell of a grind. Often playing 16 hours a day. But after achieving the rank, the armor and the weapon (after the buff they were slightly better than molten core gear) playing PvP on my warrior was incredibly funny. Joining AV several healers decided to only heal me, watching me oneshotting most people (most mediocre equipped clothies had less than 2k health). Best memory of WoW.

Me in my newness half expected the "Argent Tournament Dailies" to be here... compared to the stuff in this video, the 30-60 minute daily quest time was/is nothing, especially since I actually enjoy them- except for when the quest to kiss frogs near a lake in Fantasy Canada until a lady gives you a sword takes 30 minutes on its own because of bad RNG.

The weapon skill grind was easy; players would just attack the unkillable mob in the Blasted Lands (they wouldn't die unless you destroyed a particular object). Often times these mobs were kited to Stormwind *because* they were unkillable.

Surprised you brought up Alani. I spent many days farming in vale and was super proud of my thundering Ruby cloud serpent. I remember a couple friends came to watch me kill it even. Good times.

Omg someone remembers the furbolg rep grind? I thought I was alone. Great video

You forgot the grind of waiting for Legion

Those last two levels were a right of passage in vanilla WoW. Only thing that could top that would be the grind for your Paladin epic mount. Anybody got an arcanite transmute? www.engadget.com/2007/12/18/the-light-and-how-to-swing-it-the-paladin-epic-mount-quest-for/

I would love to see all your top 10 videos, but just exclusive to Vanilla. Thanks for these!

The Bloodthirsty title is probably more painful than the Warlord of Draenor title but they're both pretty painful to farm

How do you not have the original Cenarion Circle rep grind on here? It literally took me all summer to get exalted.

You can keep destroying and remaking your glad sanctum to get all the quests at once

some things to say at the insane title: There was another way to gain both reputations. in the first place you could kill booty bay guards to gain faction for bloodsail buccaneers. the tricky part was that you had to have honored on the buccaneers and exalted with steamweedle at the same time. you killed booty guards for buccaneers but when you killed bucanneers for steamweedle rep you lost faction at the bucaneers. but there where other pirates at the coast of the barrens around lvl 18 that werent bucaneers but still gave reputation for steamweedle. you had to grind those few mobs till you got exalted at steamwheedle again.

I really feel like the grind for the Winterspring Frost Saber should be on this list. I know the Furbolgs already make an appearance but that grind took me at least a few months of 3+ hours a day running this same quests in that frozen hell hole

One of the nicest grinds I remember was the Wintersaber mount - 20 days of dailies in Winterspring with your little Wintersaber cub by your side! :3

This was such a depressing video about grinding, as if actually it managed to convey the heavy repetitive boredom that comes with all those grinds. Nice work.

The Ahn Qiraj unique mount given to players who went through the whole rep and quest chains to open the gate. Not just an individual grind, but a server wide grind.... Mal'Ganis, first PVP server to open the gates.

Great video, lots of memories! Thank you!

I guess you guys don't know how painful was the grind in the shimmering flats to get enough gold for your first mount back in vanilla.

I remember grinding the corrupted Ashbringer skin in legion. Befor it was nerfed. About 80 straight standing around and nothing happened. I started teaming up with a friendly horde player. We did 12 hour shifts and then switched so other could sleep or something else. Then after 3 weeks of doing that every day i cross realm switched a couple of time while I was waiting just to see if I was lucky. I found the Ooze. But my horde friend couldn't come because he had raid night. Felt really bad for him but the group already attacked. Afterwards I started fishing. For another 30 hourse or so. About 1500 casts in I finally got the crystal. That shit was so goddamn annoying. I'll never grind again.

There was more than enough quests to level from 58-60. I can attest to that as levelling a mage, hunter, warrior and paladin in vanilla wow.Also, farmed 6 skyshards in 5 hours just 2 days ago.

These videos bring back so much, some things I'd forgotten completely. But the honor system, omg, the way it would drop every week if you weren't VERY on top of it, was so tiring. There's a reason I still wear my rank title, no matter what other titles I get, on my main. Though it dropped because I hadn't played in two days when the new system dropped, so I got dropped way back down to Sgt. Major, but dammit, I'm still proud of that title! lol

you actually missed alot of grinding info on the insane title... Getting exalted with steamwheedle was just the start. After that you needed to pickpocket UBRS for hours and hours. And then you needed to collect books from Diremaul and combine them with other hard to farm stuff, in order to get exalted with Shen'Dralar. After that you needed to get exalted with darkmoon faire. and the only way of doing that back in the day, was by combining cards and make decks. Took me nearly 2 years to get it and it is still the title i wear today :) Nowadays, the Shen'Dralar is removed from the chain and has become a feat of strength. And with the renewed Darkmoon Faire, you only need to do dailies to get exalted. The guards in all the goblin cities are much stronger now though

funny enough, i remember flying trough the time lost protodrake zone and saw him randomly, killed it and when i loot his corpse i got the mount, i had no idea at the time that the mount was such a big deal and rare. And when i told my guild mates they all freaked out and were mad at me for my insane luck

The worst thing in this video is the very basic attitude, that something is a GRIND. Especially with rank 14, where the rewards were gear that competed with the most hardcore gear that was available until Naxx. And we know how neigh impossible Naxx was compared to PvP. If you don't look at the "grind" and just play what you enjoy, you don't even notice that it is a grind. PTS from WSG? If i see WSG now, I am wondering if I would stand on the roof or at the tunnel ,as I was mostly defending and chasing. I had FUN there, and since that was my passion, it never got boring. It brought challenges with it, especially when I got better, and started to meet ranked groups with my ranked group. Those were some eopic fights. I didn't even notice, but I simply stopped killing people around the map, and was chasing down unkillable targets. Like 3 times circling the island in AB chasing down one of the best healers on the server, and disabling him off the warrior in his group. It was glorious!

I remember the quest gap from 58-60, I had played since a week after launch. I never really had to deal with the mob-kill-grind part, as I was a healing priest that was willing to deal with insane players with much better gear than me (I had blues and greens of mixed use, and was a "Hybrid" 25/26 priest back in those days...I never really raided much till BC, though I think I did get an epic in Vanilla from a PUG Molten Core). I ran dungeon after dungeon, specifically full Strat, Scholomance, and BRD...and I was willing to try to keep everyone alive as best I could. I took Shammy tanks (Enhance Shamans back then, I was Horde, and yes they were insane), groups with multiple INSANE Mages (seriously...I've yet to meet a Mage that WASN'T insane), Drood tanks (before Drood tanks were a thing, and yes, at the time they were insane too), etc. And by golly I kept us alive *most* of the time...at the cost of my own insanity of course. And...um...I was never able to figure out the mechanics of "downranking" spells, so I knew every single spell I had like the back of my hand and relied on timing to do my thing. So when the Downranking nerf happened in the middle of BC, my view point was...."what nerf? Nothing's changed from what I can see." while literally every other healer was screaming bloody murder. (A side note: don't group with multiple insane mages.....they are insane and will try their hardest to juggle ever-increasing numbers of mobs between them in a contest to see who can do the biggest damage among them, and will drag your own sanity kicking and screaming along with wherever they wish to go....it's best you just go along for the ride and not think too hard about it.... And before you ask, yes...I did manage to keep everyone alive 75+ % of the time...though I'm still trying to figure out if I have any PTSD from it or not...scolding them never worked and only seemed to make them try *harder* next time.) I got turned off about a year or so after Cata was launched as all my friends were going off in various directions and couldn't care less whether I came along or not. So I left..... I came back for short time in Legion and was ready to give the Healing Priest a go again, this time hang the previous friends, I'll find some new ones....and then..... I discovered it....."Wait...what? I can't cast a shield as a Holy Priest anymore?" I hadn't known at the time that the classes were completely ripped apart and simplified, and so...well...I leveled to 100 alone as a Shadow Priest, because I could shield myself at least and it was the least ripped apart of the Priest sub-classes. I wanted to be a group healing priest again, but now, if I couldn't use a shield, I didn't know how to play that half of my class anymore. (For those who might be a bit confused, I used the Power Word: Shield as a "pause" on the damage coming in to whoever I was working on, even in some cases, flipping rapidly between targets. It gave me precious time to think, and prioritize, and plan. I knew intimately how much damage it absorbed, how long it would last otherwise, how long the debuff lasted on my target, and how long the cooldown lasted on my hotbar. It literally was my lynch pin in my timing prowess in my ability to keep a group alive. In all honesty....it's what kept me from being a button masher healer.) Now I have to completely re-learn how to play a healing priest and I'm afraid I just don't have the stomach (or time) for it anymore. It's a shame, really....give me just that one freaking spell, and I could jump right in and take literally any changes to healing for my class as a "Holy Priest." I know Disc Priests can still cast Shield, but they are now a "Damage Dealer Healer" and I can't wrap my brain around that, and Shadow Priests are a "Self Preservation Damage Dealer and if you need them to heal, just wipe already" sub class. But, I guess I'm just too old now.

I did the skyshard farm... not sure if it was worth it, but it's fun to have ^^

Getting The Insane title was fucking... insane

Actually at some point grinding Warsong factions reputations (the ones found in the battleground) was also insane, mainly cause it was bound only to flag caps and in some games you would lose the fight without one single cap. Did the Timbermaw in vanilla tho this BG rep farm was far worst.

Addicted to your top 10 vids

Back in Vanilla pvp, you could only queue for one battleground at the time too; so which ever was the more popular one at the time/day. There were also no battelgroups. Grinding the rank 14 title also 'forced' you to not only play a lot, but also be the top ranked player every week. Missing the top spot for any given week would severely set you back.

I had all of Warlords of Draenor but 5 weeks of Ashran for 5 hour a day i got 200 panda kills then went on a dry spell for a month and gave up

58 to 60 was just one insane instance run. Pre-nerf Scholomance, including killing the re-spawns several times. I was the tank. And we needed like 6 hours or so. But we cleared the instance and I leveled up to 60 at about the last boss. Iiirc it was literally after killing the last boss. The second run took a hell lot less time, because I went in green and got out with mostly blue gear. ^_^ Fun times.

One of my guildmates got to PvP rank 14 with two characters, first with his Alliance main and after that with his Horde alt. There was a system in place to decide who would get the rank each week to minimize the grind, but still an insane task to do it twice.

Also you forgot WSG exalted. You could (hypothetically) grind for hours or days without getting a single reputation point if your teammates are incompetent. Which, sadly, is often the case.

The original Winterspring Frostsaber grind was EXTREMELY demanding way back when the game was new, because not only was it super tedious because it required a lot of back and forth on a regular mount but you also had super terrible gear compared to what you could have after BWL/AQ or even Naxx released. I levelled relatively quick having hit level 60 on December 7th 2004 as a dwarf paladin and between the day I found out about the saber some time in mid December till March 25th 2005 all I did outside of school/4 hours of sleep a day was farm Winterspring rep the entirety of my time outside of raiding; so a little over 4 months at between 8 to 19 hours a day (depending on school/raiding). Upon purchasing the saber, from March 25th to April 29th I had to farm Exalted with Darnassus for the Tiger riding skill. As word caught on that Blizzard intended on re-working the look of the 100% mounts around that time (and also afraid that the patch would change the way the Winterspring saber looked) and I hadn't gotten an epic Ram because all I'd done was farm rep and raid, I took a break from raiding and just tried to find every single Darnassus rep quest from the NE starting zone to wherever it led me. Obviously I ended up missing a bunch because quest helpers/addons weren't a thing so at around 6000 into revered I had to do it through Evergreen Pouch/morrowgrain (this was before cloth turn ins were a thing) - it was incredibly boring but since you could also occasionally just buy the herbs on AH it wasn't nearly as long as the WS grind. I could finally use the mount, though. I ended up having made around 870 gold from all sources from the start to the end of the grind as I got lucky with some world/epic drops so I figured I might as well try and do a final stretch to get a regular 100% mount too, so I flipped some dark iron ore/bars for a couple days and bought the white Ancient Frostsaber which I didn't want to swap for the new mounts. I'm very glad I didn't because not only is it the best looking mount in the game ever (imo), it also became thousandfold rarer than the Winterspring one even a few months thereafter and infinitely more special nowadays... even though I quit WoW in 2014.

I remember when I got my TLPD, I got it while trying to get the new puzzle mount. on my way to ulduar to turn on the lights in a specific pattern (after defeating the fourth boss). I was flying on my way, and it spawned right in front of me over K3!

Came for Timbermaw rep. Left happy.

Worst grind was trying to get the 2h sword from archeology, I gave up after months of archeology

weapon skills were the best ... its logical that you need to master a weapon to use it effectivly... and its an mmorpg they should be time consuming...

As someone that hit rank 12 in vanilla pvp..... i miss WSG, AB, and AV all the time. Helping crew members hit High Warlord was an epic feat (especially if only one person played the account).

I had a friend who grinded out the bloodsail buccaneer rep to exalted in vanilla. When BC came out, he rerolled engineering to blacksmithing to get the deep thunder mace. After he did that, he had to grind his way out of hated with all the goblin towns so he could do the quest to become a mace smith, because all the weapon smith trainers where in winterspring in the goblin town.

Cant belive u didnt mention the Vile of the Sands. Its rng inside of rng inside of even more rng. First you gotta hope the Dig Site is in the zone from Cata, Then u gotta hope the artifact ur making is a jar, AND THEN & only then do you have to pray to RN-Jesus that whats in the jar is the recp.

the egg grind for the netherwing drake

An old friend of mine, got "the last" High Warlord title on his realm. He got it, just before they made those ranks unobtainable. He ofc kept it to TBC and beyond. There's no way I'd have that amount of dedication for WoW.

Not nearly as bad as any of the grinds on your list, but I remember back in Classic, when mounts were the costly item and riding was cheap and your standard faction epic mount cost a whopping 1000 gold (which was months of farming), so I leveled the Alterac Valley rep for the Stormpike Ram, which only cost 200 gold. But I had to farm Alterac Valley. For weeks. In a PVP, where an AV could easily last an entire day and the only reliable farming was to pick up pieces from killed players and hand them in. And I did that on a Rogue, and I was bad at the game. It was Hell :D but it saved me a whopping 800 gold in the long run.

BRO, HIRU, WHAT THE F*CK ARE THE TWO MAIDS FROM RE:Zero DOING HERE?!?!?!

try grinding from 1-60 with no friends no guild, and without dungeons in vanilla with a class that was extra squishy mage or warlock and on a pvp server good luck getting ganked while you grinded for weeks to get to 60

I remember doing a grind I think in wrath that needed exalted to get a nether drake? Can’t exactly remember the details but I remember spending 2 months straight grinding quests every day for it

Just thought of another one. The Tiny Carp pets on Mists. Assuming you were capped in fishing, had the tuskarr spears, the best fishing pole, and we're using the optimal lure, it was only like 3000 casts or so (on average, you could regularly get unlucky and go well into the 6000's). Of course, there are four, so that's 3000ish casts each. Don't go fishing in the wrong areas either, or you won't find it no matter the amount of times you try.

You forgot grind for Ahn'Qiraji opening event for scepter, THE WORST grind :D

My uncle has the Insane title. He’s alive and well today.

I and around 12 others got HWL all in our same guild on the server Lightninghoof, one of the original new servers to debut. We transferred there and because of the small server size all got rank 14 in near back to back week fashion.

I'm sad the grind for the Winterspring Frostsaber wasn't on this list. I did that one and it was absolutely insane. I grinded those quests from about level 56 to 60, and by then I wasn't even half done.

The last grind I remember doing was the Netherwing grind of 2015... Managed to get from hated to exalted in just under a week. 10-ish hours a day for 6 days straight. My character never left that island, unless it was to do a daily quest for Netherwing... I was king of that mountain, and there were so many dead mobs at once that they'd just autoloot upon death (did you know that it does that when the loot menu is too full?). By day 3, the song had gotten to me and I started to sing along with it (had a... special grind song: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-SsjJ1WWrV20.html It seemed fitting. It was on loop 24/7. Even when I wasn't grinding. *Eggs-actly* )

Vial of sand recipe…

I still remember the poor horde guy abram who wasn’t in clique that took turns getting high warlord status. He pugged and still almost made it. Lost internet for a couple of days, came back and quit the game.

Gathering materials for Old Naxxramas as a resto druid.NOW THAT WAS PAINFUL.