One of the very pleasant surprises coming with the Mists press tour was the news about the new ways in which reputation factions will function. In Vanilla, most factions required endless grinding of instances or repeatable turn-ins. Burning Crusade added daily quests, but for the core factions, you generally had to grind dungeons within a particular dungeon complex: You'd get Sha'tar for doing the Tempest Keep dungeons, or Honor Hold/Thrallmar rep for doing Hellfire Citadel dungeons.
Wrath introduced reputation tabards, allowing you to run whatever dungeon you wanted and focus on one faction at a time, which was done very much the same way in Cataclysm. The problem with this, however, is that I think it's taken some of the meaning out of a reputation. Yes, it's definitely made it less onerous to hit exalted with the factions you want, but ultimately it doesn't feel very different than a JP/VP grind, except that the rewards will usually not be relevant beyond the initial content patch. While I was getting sick of running Mechanar, Arcatraz and Botanica over and over to get the shield from the Sha'tar (which come to think of it, I don't think I actually did until I had the Shattered Sun shield,) it also feels a little weird going into Throne of the Tides with a tabard declaring your love of the Guardians of Hyjal. The Naga there are probably like "the whos of what now?"
So what I'm very happy to see is that there appear to be a whole host of factions that have a more meaningful progression. The truth of it, really, is that factions have always been a pretty boring grind. Not only that, but they make it take longer and longer as you gain reputation, both because of higher numbers to reach the next level and lower amounts granted (at least in Avengers of Hyjal.)
The Molten Front was not a new faction - it was tied to Guardians of Hyjal, which was a faction you'd already be at least honored with by the time you unlocked those quests in the first place. It was also problematic (the main issue, I think, being that you started with a reasonable number of dailies, but as you unlocked the actual molten front, and then the Druids of the Talon or the Shadow Wardens, you wound up spending a huge amount of time there every day. Also, I try very hard, but even on a shaman I find a bunch of elementals to be not particularly compelling villains - but that's just me.
That said, when you did make progress, it felt very cool. One big part was the way that Leyara's story tied into it - her introduction along with the Druids of the Flame, the shocking moment when you thought Hamuul was dead, her death along with Hamuul's return, and then ultimately, her backstory, which made both her and Fandral more sympathetic, even if they did ultimately fall to corruption.
Many of the factions, the Tillers and the Shado-pan, the Cloud Serpent trainers - all of them seem to have a true story progression. Whereas with the Earthen Ring you simply get a couple more items to purchase if you get to the next level, I think there's a lot of potential if having a more active approach to factions.
While the reputation grind can still be a part of it, I'd like to see that as kind of a smaller part of the progression. It's very clear that Blizzard wants people to play the game as they prefer to play it in Mists, so if you're fine with the same dungeon grind as usual, you should be able to stick to that, but my hope is that you'll be able to make significant progress in other ways.
Now, the thing that would really, really help with grinds like these would be to implement a fairly large set of non-repeatable quests. The grind gets you from one link in the massive chain to the next, so for instance, you meet the Tillers and you do a little quest chain to convince them that you're worth their time. After that, you get a few dailies to help them out. When you hit friendly, which should be after just a couple days, you get a new set of non-daily quests, where you prove to them that you should go to the next level. Once those are done, you get new dailies, but you don't have to do the old ones anymore. Finally, when you hit exalted, you get a final quest chain that ultimately rewards you with the really cool rewards. The grind becomes more exciting when there's a meaningful difference between Honored and Revered.
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