Here is how I envision Archaeology, revamped. This is nothing more than an idea, and has utter disregard for the amount of man-power required to implement it.

1. Choose a race to research.
This starts off at your Archaeology trainer as a random weekly quest. The quest giver found some interesting information about a rare artifact and wants you to research it. Choosing one of the quests will disable the other race's quests until you either drop the current weekly quest, or finish it and the next week starts.

2. Follow a quest line.
This leads you to find a book somewhere in the world (or instance like SM library, higher quests have higher instance requirements) about this race that has a clue about where to search for this artifact. (It doesn't really have to have the clue in the text of the book, just reading it will open up your dig sites). After thinking about it, this step can probably be scrapped, just an idea on how to tie in some interesting books that nobody reads anymore except for achievement points.

3. Dig for clues.
All of the locations (even across continents) regarding the selected race will be marked as potential dig sites. Digging in a dig site will end up with a percentage of low value grays, but occasionally give you a clue. The clues will progress from continent, to general vicinity of a zone, to zone. The dig site that ends up containing the final artifact will always contain the artifact so if you are lucky, you can find it on your first dig, but should be rare with many dig sites. This should not be unique to quest though, or you can just Wowhead it and go straight to the dig site. (This is where we bump into technical(db storage) issues on Blizzard's side that probably prevent this kind of quest)

4. Turn in Artifact for rewards
Return to the weekly quest giver with the Artifact to claim your rewards. Here are some rewards that I have in mind. The quest can be a mix of the following:
- Skill points (like current, which unlock different races)
- Direct Archaeology reward items (this rare artifact rewards you this pet or 100g+ sellable gray)
- Tokens that can be used to purchase rewards (like Valor/Justice points).
- Reputation with a certain Adventurer faction (think Brann Bronzebeard vs Harrison Jones) for doing their quests which unlock different rewards(based on above mentioned tokens).

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