I never played alliance pre wotlk, always did horde. So I'm going to be rolling a human this time, but I really want to get a cat mount (not the ugly pvp one) because horses are boring.
My understanding is that in vanilla, grey quests give reduced reputation and that the cloth quartermasters will not exist on the server until later. So it seems the most reasonable (or only) way to get another race's mount is to level in their areas and do the quests while they are at least green.
I'm wondering if leaving Elwynn at 10, doing a few quests in the nelf noob zone, then doing quests in darkshore/ashenvale/stonetalon/desolace will be enough to get a human with 10% rep bonus to exalted with Darnassus, preferably before level 40. Has anyone done this?
I understand that there are no mage or lock trainers in that area for alliance, so I'd have to go back to IF to train, but I'm ok with slowing down my leveling for the sake of a vanity mount.