World of Warcraft Classic is home to a variety of eclectic factions. From the noble and just Argent Dawn to the dastardly Bloodsail Buccaneers, players can earn reputation with them all through various quests, mob kills, and turn-ins. Completionist players will need to grind to exalted with all of them, but most of us are only interested in grinding rep if there's a suitable reward.
Whether your definition of a suitable reward is a best in slot item, a purely cosmetic outfit, or a new profession recipe, there is a faction that makes the grind worth it. Without further ado, let's dive into 10 Classic factions that are worth your time.
10 Stormpike Guard / Frostwolf Clan
The Alterac Valley factions for both Alliance and Horde provide a number of useful epic items as well as a cosmetic mount. Most important among these items is the epic best in slot ring for almost every class and spec. Don Julio's Band for tanks, melee and ranged DPS, and Don Rodrigo's Band for priests, mages, and warlocks. AV queues often last longer than an hour nowadays, and the games themselves can run just as long.
Thankfully, there are a couple of other rewards that might prove helpful to you depending on your class and gear quality, including Frostbite, The Lobotomizer, The Unstoppable Force, and Lei of the Lifegiver. Lastly, the epic mounts sold to those with exalted reputation have unique models, which is a little bit of icing on top.
9 Wintersaber Trainers (Alliance)
Speaking of unique epic mount models, it doesn't get much better than the Winterspring Frostsaber. Unfortunately, this mount is only available to Alliance players, and, in order to purchase it, you need to grind all the way to exalted reputation with the Wintersaber Trainers. The only way to farm reputation with them is through a series of repeatable quests that change as you gain more rep.
The last of this series will have you running across the entire zone to kill the elite giant mobs just north of Darkwhisper Gorge. Then you'll run all the way back to turn in the quest and pick it up again. Rinse and repeat this process for the majority of a month's time and you will be rewarded with one of the sweetest mounts in the game.
8 Warsong Outriders / Silverwing Sentinels
We hope you like capture the flag. Because in order to obtain your best in slot bracers, you're going to be playing a lot of it. Warsong Gulch PvP rewards were released with the launch of phase 3 earlier this week.
The fastest way to grind to exalted is to queue up with some friends/guildies in a 10 man premade and string together quick wins. Warsong is known as a battleground plagued with consumables. Free action potions are especially helpful for running the flag by enemy crowd control, so have your flag runner stock up beforehand.
7 Argent Dawn
This may be the easiest of all reputations to grind, as all you need to do is run Stratholme and Scholomance with your Argent Dawn Commission equipped. The mobs inside give reputation up to revered. At this point, you will need to turn in the scourgestones they drop while the commission is equipped to get you the rest of the way there.
Argent Dawn rewards aren't the most enticing, but, now that phase 3 has dropped, they do sell the Formula: Enchant Bracer - Healing. This is the best in slot bracer enchant for all healers. Besides that, the blessed sunfruit foods they offer give strength and spirit buffs. Lastly, at exalted you can buy your best in slot shoulder enchant, which gives you +5 to all resistances.
6 Timbermaw Hold
There are many different ways to grind timbermaw reputation including repeatable quests, mob grinding, and runecloth turn-ins. With all of these options available, it's really up to you how you want to do it. There are three notable rewards that timbermaw reputation earns you.
The first is the Furbolg Medicine Pouch, which you can purchase from a timbermaw vendor at honored reputation. It's a good item to have for PvP as it restores 1000 health over 10 seconds. Then, there's the 1H weapon agility enchant which just came out alongside phase 3. The best reward is saved for last, requiring exalted reputation and the completion of a final quest. The quest rewards you with a trinket that summons a timbermaw NPC to fight by your side. The NPC also heals you, which is pretty sweet.
5 Allied Races
As every Classic WoW player ought to know by now, attaining exalted reputation with the other races of your faction allows you to purchase mounts from them. While a purely cosmetic reward, mount collecting is one of the most popular pursuits in retail WoW. So there's obviously a market for this practice. Even if you're not a collector, maybe you prefer the look of the troll's raptor mounts to the orc's wolves.
Funnily enough, tauren players actually have good reason to grind out reputation with Orgrimmar and earn a wolf mount. Otherwise, they'll find themselves forced to dismount every time they enter Undercity on foot. The elevator doorways are too small for gigantic kodo models.
4 Thorium Brotherhood
The Thorium Brotherhood is most notable for providing players the quest to craft Sulfuron Hammer. When combined with the Eye of Sulfuras, which has an incredibly low drop rate, you end up with Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnaros. However, the Sulfuron Hammer plans aren't even part of the faction's reputation rewards. So why grind reputation with the brotherhood? Because they have a lot of other goodies to offer, of course.
Tanks will find the rewards especially useful, as many of the items feature large amounts of fire resistance. Black Dragonscale Boots, Molten Belt, Corehound Belt, Chromatic Gauntlets, and Dark Iron Boots are all useful pieces of gear. Lastly, there's the coveted Nightfall axe. This weapon has a proc that increases the spell damage of your entire raid by 15%, so you're going to want someone in your guild wielding it.
3 Bloodsail Buccaneers
Bloodsail Buccaneers' reputation may be the hardest to earn of all the factions. To make matters worse, the reputation rewards are purely cosmetic. In other words, only true World of Warcraft savants will bother with grinding this reputation, as there's no practical reason to do so.
The only way to gain reputation is by killing a number of NPCs located in Stranglethorn Vale. The booty bay bruisers that guard Booty Bay provide the most reputation gain, but they are also a little tricky to grind as they constantly respawn. The best place to kill them is at the back of town near the blacksmith's house. If you do decide to complete this grind, congratulations! Enjoy your grand reward of a complete pirate outfit, including a hat that can summon a parrot.
2 Hydraxian Waterlords
As any MC raider will tell you, Hydraxian Waterlord reputation is very important to have. Otherwise, you'll never be able to summon Ragnaros and enjoy the great loot he has to offer. The only problem is that the quintessences you need to purchase in order to summon Ragnaros are one-time use.
Meaning that every week, you'll have to travel back to the middle of nowhere in Azshara to purchase a new quintessence. How annoying. Thankfully, with the release of phase 3, eternal quintessences have been added to the game. These can be used an infinite number of times. However, in order to purchase one you'll need Revered reputation with the waterlords.
1 Ravenholdt
Ravenholdt is a league of assassins whose headquarters are hidden away in the Alterac Mountains. All rogue players will be familiar with this group of bad-mouthers, but other players may be entirely unaware of their existence. If you ever take a trip to Ravenholdt, you'll find that the NPCs there are among the rudest in the game.
They threaten to kill you, tell you to get lost, and besmirch your good name. This cannot stand! The good news is that if you grind reputation with them by killing Syndicate mobs they learn to treat you with some respect. There is no other reward, but what could be more valuable than the approval of 15-year-old pixels?