My Horde Mage is supposed to be working on the Kyrian Campaign. She’s done Chapter 3 — and is horrified by the implications of Scourge presence in Lakeshire. I keep thinking “tonight I’m going to do Chapter 4”, and then I keep doing other things instead.
As soon as she’d finished up the Necrolords Campaign, my Alliance Mage went back to the Venthyr. When she was in the Venthyr earlier, she’d hardly touched Sanctum upgrades, only doing the Stage 1 Anima Conductor and reinforcing the Greater Greedstone. Upon returning to Sinfall, her first objective was to upgrade the Anima Conductor to Stage 2 and reinforce Darkwing Drills. When that was done, she recruited Laurent and got to work on activating and upgrading the Mirror Network all the way to Stage 3. After I’ve been to Korthia and gotten flying, I want to put both Mages in Venthyr and get working on doing Venthyr Travel Network Broken Mirrors with them until I’ve obtained the Soulbreaker’s Burnished Mantle & Sash. She’s just gotten the Mirror Network up to Stage 2.
Meanwhile, Kaurinka and Kamalia decided that they didn’t want to wait until they’d done the Night Fae Campaign to start working on the Queen’s Conservatory. After doing the introductory quests and reading the Wowhead Guide, I decided to backburner it with Kamalia until she gets her Mushroom Network — recently advanced to Stage 2 — fully upgraded. Kaurika, however, has now upgraded her Queen’s Conservatory to Stage 2 and is farming catalyst seeds while she gathers Anima for further upgrades. The main reward I want from the Queen’s Conservatory which has to be farmed — to my relief, the recolor of the armor set is not RNG-dependent, but can simply be bought for 12.5K Anima after fully upgrading the place — is the Spirit Tender’s Bulb, which is one of the possible rewards from Untamed Spirits with two Wildseed Root Grain catalysts active.
Kamalia et alia 
You know, I was thinking about Wowhead today, and how totally dependent we are on externally written guides on how to do things in WoW. I’d had this poking at me for the longest time, ever since I had to deal with attunements in TBC Classic, but it just kind of bothers me that WoW is basically built now to be played by people using “solved written guides”. Kind of like a teacher creating high school English tests written with the assumption that everybody has read the Cliffs Notes on the novel you’re reading.
That’s what I get for not finishing that thought….
Anyway, even now, I was helping my questing buddy with her transition away from Enchanting and back to Tailoring for crafting some gear using Spellcloth, and I was referencing the Wowhead guides as to where to go to farm Silk and Mageweave the best. I mean, I kind of knew off the top of my head where to go, but I still went there to confirm if my gut impressions were correct. (They were; but they offered an alternate location for Mageweave I hadn’t considered because it tended to attract people in Classic for other forms of farming.)
Still, think about it. Here I am, having played Retail back before Cataclysm, and having played Classic, and I’m still referencing Wowhead on basic stuff like this. Without a Wowhead, the exploration and discovery that had been kind of snuffed out of the game would be put back in place, because you’d have to figure it out on your own.
Until someone else posted a YouTube guide, I suppose.
I suppose at some time I’d thought I’d want to figure out the Queen’s Conservatory (and the Ember Court, which I haven’t started yet but for which I have perused the Wowhead guides) on my own. There’s only one specific reward I want from it, though, and with various other demands on my attention, I didn’t want to fish for it. So, to the guide I went.
Guides aren’t a thing we can ever get away from, I think. There is this tension between discovery and efficiency (for lack of a better suitably concise term). There’s also the desire of the discoverers to share what they’ve learned to make the way easier for those who follow. I don’t know if there *is*, but there could be a Far Side featuring cavemen about writing/following a guide for making fire 😛