Thoughts on 8.2 so far

Since 8.2 came out, I've been diligently grinding out the rep during the days that I have play time available.  That tends to be 3-4 days a week during a busy summer, give or take.  While quite a few people already have flying unlocked, I'm about halfway to revered with the Unshackled folks and about 1/3 of the way there on with the Rustbolt crew.  I'm guessing I'll have flying unlocked sometime next week.

So here are my thoughts so far.

• Nazjatar sucks.  It's difficult to get around in, the mobs hit like trucks and a significant number of the daily quests, at least in my opinion, are just terrible.  Having to run around a difficult to navigate zone looking for the same random spawn starfish, seaweed, flotsam, whatever that 1,000 other people are looking for and seemed to have been placed right in the middle of areas with large numbers of mobs are less than fun.  Also, after so many years, we still can't come up with anything more compelling than "Go Kill 15 of Mob X"?   However, I'm guessing I'll enjoy it a lot more once I have flying unlocked and can get around easier.
• Good things on Nazjatar - the zone is beautiful, I like the bodyguard daily quests and leveling system and some of the side quests (Mardivas, and the various rune and ley line puzzles) are really fun and well done.
• I like Mechagon a lot at this point.  It would be even more interesting if I was an engineer, but I'm enjoying it quite a bit nonetheless.  Even without an emissary quest or the volume of world quests, the pace of gaining rep seems to be just fine.  I've gotten some neat mount rewards out of the zone so far which are unique and that I really like.

Love this guy.  Seems kind of like something you had to pay 1 million gold for in Legion, so even better that it was a free drop.

Still need to pick a pretty color for this guy, but love the mount.

• The rares in both zones seem really well done and have good, meaningful rewards
• There is definitely an incentive here to get back into pet battling because it grants a large amount of rep in some cases, so that's been interesting as I've tried to resurrect a team that hasn't really been used since MoP.
• Also, rep rewards from fishing.  Yes please!

So I think overall I'd give it good reviews.  The things that I'm really enjoying slightly outweigh the things that are pissing me off.  And as gated rep grinds go, it's not the worst they've ever done.\

I've finally gotten to the point where I'm finishing my rep grinds on Nazjatar and Mechagon with some time left over to continuing leveling my allied race toons.  I got the Void Elf Monk to 110.  He's the third allied race toon to make it to that point.  The Highmountain Tauren Warrior has moved up to around 82.  Everyone else is basically right where they were from the last update.

Cheers, 

Joar