A couple of wise men once said that and despite their inherent wisdom most of us continue to ignore the truth in those words. So how often is it that people want the rewards without the efforts? I would say given a choice, all the time, but those more grounded in reality realize that without putting forth the effort, no rewards are coming to you on their own accord. I too have felt the same way too often, in real-life my desire to get into a top rank MBA without working for it is probably one of my biggest ones, in game my desire to get my epic mount until very recently was the same. Though finally getting it taught me a lot.
I was until the beginning of Jan at about 500g and had been fluctuating around that number for quite a while, by quite a while I mean over 3 months. It seemed that all the money I made was lost on raids, enchants, gems etc. I had mentally decided that it was impossible to achieve both a constant raiding schedule interspersed with in-game moolah was never gonna happen. Yet a month later the picture is entirely different. I have my epic flight form, and over 1k in the bank, so what happened?
To put it bluntly I grew tired. Travel was slow and painful, grouping to do quests with my other guildies with epic flyers resulted in a lot of waiting on their part. Constant tells in gchat with other player's gold progress was beginning to break me until finally I decided I was gonna put in a couple of hours to do the dirty and grind/farm. And so it started, I asked a couple of friends about the best places to farm and began grinding while chatting most of the times on gchat. Some places were easy farming some were not, and market fluctuations constantly forced me to farm different things. One week it was cobra scales, another heavy clefthoof and a third it was primal fire.
But heres the deal, you aren't the only one aware of such farming spots, a lot of other people are, which results in competition, the most hateful of which is amongst members of your own faction. Why only them, well because they can clearly show you their displeasure and I like to stay on the good side of people, most of the times atleast. So after a while I decided that farming was not my thing. I was still only half way to my goal which meant giving up would be a sign of weakness. My farming also led to my constant whining on the gchat channel that this was hard work, almost to a point where I am sure people were wondering if I wasn't coercing them to pay me to shut up, despite that not being the case.
So unable to bring myself to farm and with lack of tolerance for my bickering, I sought alternate measures. It took me a while but it finally dawned on me that the one way to farm without competition (mostly anyways) was to do quests that I had left behind when I hit the big Seven-O. Infact I had left an entire zone (Netherstorm) to do with a friend, who ended up blowing through them anyway, so I got down to doing quests, and being heavily raid geared they were a breeze, even group quests. I could basically pull entire packs upon packs of mobs and down them with barely any health loss. It was so easy a ret pally could do it. Killing level 70+ elites which would normally been a crash course in "Hand over the money to my dead raid priest", turned into a fun and easy way to earn a buttload of cash. Not to mention selling all those quest rewards and DE-ing the random greens and auctioning the random blues. Towards the end people were constantly offering to fund my final leap, of which I took on one offer since questing with epic flight form is way too easy and faster.
Anyway it taught me that even the seemingly unattainable is far easier to do when you get started. Before I got started I had already decided that my ambitions were flawed and this would result in months over months of soul-crushing grinds, but that is no true. We often become pessimistic to avoid short term effort even if it may result in long term gain. The onus is on us(hehe) to define and establish our goals not simply through words but through effort. In the words of another wise man "Action expresses priorities." - M.K.Gandhi
p.s. Who says there is nothing to be learnt from video games =)
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