The Absent Minded Prospector
Solution: abandon it, skip it, ignore it, forget it.
Which quests did you come across that are completely skip material?
At the moment a number of quests in STV from oodles of other players at the same stage, pop to Arathi highlands and get the same - everyone wants raptors 
Then there are those escort quests …
Gets me exploring in finding lesser populated areas… so positive and its expected so I just go with the flow
I did that quest without any addons. Tried alone and failed. Then did with hunter.
The chicken escort quests BY FAR.
Demetria…
I’ve skipped a few quests, but i always come back to them.
Say i get an elite quest i can’t do by myself i either
A) Skip it and wait
or
B) Make a team while doing another quest
Can’t really think of any. I did use to skip elite quests but found out a while back that I can solo most of them.
Used to use Joana’s guide on private servers and even as a hunter the elites were just ridiculous. Dont know how I didnt suss that private servers were clearly wrong since he recommended people do them
Heculars Rod. F*** that piece of s*** droprate.
Done all 3. Zero problems
Hecular’s Rod is known for it’s low drop rate - I got really lucky 30 minutes killing Yeti’s and done.
Had more trouble getting 12 Murloc Heads in Dustwallow Marsh, and the 10 Turtle Meat cooking quest from TM.
Helcular’s rod dropped for me from the second yeti 
RNG
What’s the rate for sida’s bag now i wonder. That’s ally only.
20 people FFA could have been reduced to 4 group royale
Only abandoned quests for me are the ones that go gray really or are in zones I dont intend to level in
People have been grouping up, but due to the add-on, it was impossible for anyone but a single person to get the quest, even among those with the add-on. First you have to turn in, and there was literally no more than a 0.5 second window to talk to the guy each time.
Been invited to a group already there. 10 minutes in some guy came around, maybe they failed previous attempt and took it. After another 15 minutes our team got it, or shall I say, a single person in our team did - the one who joined last, in the 23rd minute of my being there. Other people have been jumping around us on the spawn non-stop. So after 30 minutes invested I decided to bail. (Could have gained 9000xp by grinding in the same time. I didn’t want to gamble on a further 90+ minutes of trying at midnight.)
We have verbally agreed to wait for everyone to turn in, but the automation add-on doesn’t care, or some people didn’t care to comply (turning it off).
It would have been fine without the breadcrumb.
What’s wrong with them? I’ve seen in a stream that they tend to ignore aggro and run away at high speed.
There is a lot of quests with zero point to do. Rod from yeti caves is ok when you got fresh spot and can aoe them. If spot flooded with players and you are bad with single target - abandon it immediatly. I skip about 30-40% quests in every location, because it’s just impossible to do them in normal time frame when layering is gone. Sadly, most leveling guides such as Joanna is absolutely garbage in classic, since they are not consider the fact there is a lot of players and little amount of mobs.
Just take an example from joana guide:
You see, the spot is empty. Waiting one, two, three minutes, oh god, I saw a mob! Get REKD… Mob is taged by rogue in stealth and it’s gone. There is no tip, what you should when spot is out of mobs.
They don’t. Don’t watch streams, play the game 
Guides are not for fresh realms, yes. Unless you are ahead of the curve. I still use the actual text files from vanillaguide addon, when i need a reminder (not very often really)
Indeed, those guides are best if you have a fairly empty zone for yourself. Usually dynamic respawns took care of things for me. That, and I have figured to split my time: early morning to quest, evenings for group quests & dungeons.
Overall I’m only annoyed when RNG and competition combine themselves and score a critical strike. Just spent 20 minutes one-shotting furbolg in a cave to get a quest item. My record so far is 90 minutes on Redridge Goulash.
I wonder if it’s a straight up path to insanity to put focus on loremastering classic (for fun, supposedly), hence the question about what to skip (guides also skip aplenty). Low level quests don’t really give reputation, either, so the players are funneled to do level-appropriate content (and fix reputation with cloth + War Effort).
So that the intented, proper approach would be: “rush” to 60 by grinding, pick quests to complement it and make it interesting, but drop / ignore anything that impedes the efficiency. Many people hereabouts suggest it.
Rrrright 
It’s nice to check on some nice ones, especially while eating.
Can also learn a thing or two, playstyle and psychology.
I ended up just buying the turtle meat after getting only 1 in like 30 mins,
Classic is so slow you can do both simultaneously.
I’d say The Root of All Evil without turning it in, but it seems that we’re talking about Drop Rates instead.
The silver ingots part of the Morbent Fel Quest took a long time as the droprate is pretty awful and you need 6 of them (did it in the dead of the night with basically no competition), and getting the White Punchcard took a while on my Paladin (with main Hunter it was quick enough).
As for the Absent -minded Professor talk: all hail Add-Ons! They make life better for all of us!
No idea what you mean by “slow”. Same speed as ever for me.