All right.

Seriously?

Let me make absolutely certain I’ve got this right.

1) Liam Neeson.

2) Berserkers, a la Fred Saberhagen, brought up to modern Tranformer sci-fi special effects.

3) Liam Neeson.

4) U.S. Battleships, which (unless I’ve suddenly gone batshit insane) do not even exist anymore, not since like 1995.

5) Liam Neeson.

6) A deus ex machina plot device to explain why naval air power, and the use of aircraft carriers as a platform to project that air power, cannot in this instance be used.

7) Liam Neeson.

Look.

I don’t ask for much in this life.

(Stop snickering. I’m being melodramatic for effect here.)

I said I don’t ask for much.

But if you’re gonna make this movie… if you’re gonna make Battleship and you’re gonna put Liam Neeson in it…

You gotta make Liam Neeson strap broken bottles to his fists, jump onto the alien ship from the broken hull of his impossible battleship, and punch a robot Berserker Transformer shark to death while saying in his chill voice, “You sunk my battleship.”

Otherwise, wtf is the point of this movie?

Oh, and you know I’m going to see this, right?

I wish I had a great post to go with that title.

Three events all overlapping, the Lunar Festival, Love is in the Air, and the Darkmoon Faire have come to town (for reals, this time).

So much to do, so much to see, so many achievements to seek out. Providing the achievements don’t get wiped out… again.

So what did I do?

I went raiding on my Rogue, of course. It was the only responsible thing to do.

If my queue times this weekend were any indication, a whole lot of other people reacted the same way.

When last we spoke, my Rogue was nearing 85, with all sorts of goodies in the bank. I even wrote a post about how Blizzard seems to be bending over backward in giving us multiple paths to gear preparation to get us into Dragon Soul raiding as fast as possible.

How did it turn out?

My Rogue reached level 85 late Thursday night, and equipped some nice items.

By Sunday evening, my Rogue had an average iLevel of 378, and had completed all new Twilight heroics and the Dragon Soul LFR.

I’m still embarassed to be wearing a few pieces of Vicious leather gear, but my DPS in LFR, with flask and food buffs, was still in the top half of the raids at 18k to 20k.

Okay, the lower part of the top half… I guess it’s all in what you think is acceptable DPS for the LFR Dragon Soul. If you’re one of the ones that want to boot anyone in LFR that has DPS below 30k, I must seem like an unholy abomination. And WTF is with that, anyway?

I swear, it’s like the old joke of “LFM, ICC 25 man, need 24, post achieve” posted by a DPS without the achievement himself. Umm, what?

This isn’t a brag post about how leet my Rogue is, although it may sound like one. I’m not going to link to Armory and go, “Ooh, look what I got!” or anything like that.

The reality is, whatever gear I did get, anyone else can get in the exact same way. THAT is the point of the post.

What this is, is a completion of my earlier blog post thinking about gearing, and how easy or hard it may be.

I’ll grant you, this is not representative of a wide sample size. This is one class, a leather wearing Rogue. Also, I am not a new player. I’m fairly familiar with all aspects of the game, and the methods that can be followed to gain gear.

I think it is interesting to see that, armed with the guidance of an experienced player with max level characters, I was able to take a character to level 85 and equip enough gear that I could immediately step foot into the heroic Twilight instances, bypassing the original Cataclysm heroics (including the dreaded Zulroics), and do acceptable DPS right out of the gate.

Running the new Twilight heroics a total of three times gave me enough upgrades to enter Dragon Soul LFR, and running them six times total gave me enough Justice Points and Valor to be able to buy a Thrown weapon and a Trinket.

From that point, it’s on to Dragon Soul LFR, and we’re right in line with everyone else already running the new content, and conceivably able to enter Dragon Soul normal and make a contribution.

Are we talking optimized? No. It’s just the start. From there, the normal cycle of grinding Valor and chasing specific drops awaits us.

But think about what this really means.

If you have a friend that wants to try World of Warcraft, and you really did want to help them and get them into the content you are on as quick as possible, you can totally use your characters and professions and resources to buy item drops, craft BoE items, use your Valor to buy the BoE 397 epics for them and otherwise have things ready for them to step right into.

Not just theoretically, but realistically. It didn’t take me that long, just about a week, and running LFR on more characters for Valor than I normally would have.

The only true limitations to getting into a Dragon Soul raid are time, skill and a group of friends.

Damn, that’s a far cry from when I first got into raiding. Didn’t matter how good your friend was, if you just started, and your friends were running Blackwing Lair and Molten Core, good luck. You’ve got a long, long slog of questing followed by grinding Lower and Upper Blackrock Depths, doing attunement runs nobody elses wants to have to do again no matter how exciting it is to you, and so forth.

I think I should say one other thing.

People like to compare other games and how they handle getting a player into content against WoW. I might say something, and the reply will be, “Yeah, but game X did it like this which is inherently friendlier to players or better.”

That may be true, and brand X may very well do it in a way you like better, or even that IS better.

What I think is interesting about this is, World of Warcraft continues to change from it’s earliest days, when it followed in the footsteps of Everquest.

Even at that time, what we now think of as an incredibly long leveling process was revolutionary for how friendly it was to players compared to the alternative. The rested XP thing was just “wow, omg that is SO crazy!” And what about dying, and no XP penalty? Or having your gear looted from your actual in game corpse?

WoW was founded on being the kindler, gentler, less punishing MMO. More accessible. Easy to learn, difficult to master.

Other games have taken that revolutionary concept of ‘don’t hate the player’, and gone even further. Compared to those that have come after, WoW certainly can seem stuck in the past. It’s payment scheme, difficulty level and frequency of content updates all get challenged on a regular basis, and for some good reasons.

But I like to compare WoW with WoW. Where is it at compared to it’s roots?

IF you could somehow get a WoW bundle that would provide the game and all expansions in one reasonably-priced bundle, you could get a friend in with Recruit-a-friend, bring them up all the way to 85 in a flash, really TOO fast, and get them raiding with a remarkable lack of fuss and almost no grinding at all. None.

Just imagine…

So… what the hell are those people going to think when they hit 85 and suddenly face Therazane rep grinds?

Just, OMG, am I right?

Oh, and if you made it this far… eye candy!

The Godmother has asked for submissions to her Ultimate WoW Mix Tape, an idea I simply love.

Back in the day on my own blog, and holy crap it’s been years, I used to do a Raid Song of the Week feature, basically until the hosting I was using for it (eSnips) broke. :) It was fun, and I do miss it, but I was nowhere near as clean in my pursuit of the perfect raid music as The Godmother is.

The Godmother is for reals. Just her off-the-cuff list of songs she provided as examples, and her description of what mood or WoW situation they fit in are off-the-chain. (Note – BBB jumps shark with hackneyed expression that was dead before it arrived. Take cover, Arizona.)

I don’t have a real, serious contribution to her list, but it still inspired me to share some music with you (as well as send you to her blog contest, the actual point of the post).

I do have one song I always found perfect for one particular situation im WoW. Whenever I run Karazhan for fun, I still love popping in Paralyzer by Finger Eleven when I’m on Maiden of Virtue.

Well I’m not paralyzed, But, I seem to be struck by you; I want to make you move, Because you’re standing still.

It’s a good song, but it’s too old school for a modern WoW raid song entry. And how many people these days can relate to why being paralyzed by her, and wanting to make her move would be even relevant?

It doesn’t really cut it. Not for a suggestion fir the Utimate WoW Mix Tape. No ma’am.

I DO have a relevant song, but I am absolutely certain it’s not what The Godmother was looking for. So, instead of submitting it to her awesomesauce contest (which you should totally be participating in so I can reap the benefits of your suggestions on her final tape), I’m going to share my perfect song with you.

Every single time I run LFR, the tentacles are all around me. Tentacles.

No, not testicles, tentacles. Tentacles! Tentacles waving around, tentacles with eyes, tentacles flapping and flailing and flaming with a flouncing flourish.

Whether it be tentacle trash on Warlord Zon’ozz, tentacles of fire on the Spine of Deathwing, or tentacular tentacles of terrible tentational destruction on Madness of Deathwing, it’s all tentacles, all the time.

Except when there are oozes. And dragons. And, well, fine. Screw you, I’m fixated on the tentacles.

I just so happen to have a song about tentacles.

Oh hell yes I do. I am the Big Bear Butt, and when I say I have a song about tentacles, I’m not screwing around.

So I happily present to you, on this fine Friday, a song about tentacles, called, appropriately enough, Tentacles, from the album “A Shoggoth on the Roof”, published by the H. P. Lovecraft Society, and given to me years ago by my buddy Mannyac. If you can find the album, I heartily recommend it. Alex loves listening to it in the car, particularly this song.

Enjoy the tentacles, my friend. May you make it through LFR without feeling… violated.

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This song has been running through my mind this last week, as a constant background sound that has been comforting to me.

You might recognize it from the Discovery Channel reality TV cheese-fest guilty pleasure that is Sons of Guns.

It is Shelter Me, by Tab Benoit.

I hope you enjoy it.

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A new post up this morning at WoW Insider struck me as being damn timely.

The article, written by Josh Meyers and titled “Has the early Cataclysm gearing model failed?”, takes a look at the intent of early Cataclysm leveling, of gating content by iLevel, and then touches on whether it has held up or not this late in the expansion.

It’s a good article, one I found especially timely since I am actively working right now (well, when I’m not at work-work) to do everything I can to subvert that very gearing model he describes.

You play the game and get a character to level 85, and what do you want to do?

You want to go do the fun stuff.

For those that want to PvP, there are fairly new craftable PvP blue items, full armor sets as well as jewelcrafting rings and necklaces to get you started.

Clearly, the powers-that-be realized that the PvP arms race would make it painful to get stuck right in. So they added new gear as a stepping stone.

Why?

Because in PvP, there is no ‘working your way up the difficulty ladder’, no ‘easing into it’. When you zone into a BG, it’s gametime, baby and you’d better bring your ‘A’ game or find out what it looks like in first person to be teabagged by a Moonkin’s big feathery butt. Everyone else is in their best earned gear, and whether god or grunt, it’s everybody for themselves. No artificial gating of content, it’s just you, your computer, and the cold, harsh reality of survival of the fittest.

Been this way several expansions now for PvP, clearly they like how it’s working for them. Well, Burning Crusade brought PvP blues bought at the rep vendors, so it’s only been two expansions now with the crafteds. My bad. But they saw how the BC model worked, and changed it up the next time.

On the PvE side… by this late in the game, I don’t care how cool the starter heroic instances started out, everyone is sick of them as a gearing necessity.

Is it great to be able to level by running instances? Yes. Is it great to be able to do instance quests? Yes. Is it awesome that as you level and have fun in even the normal instances, you get Justice Points towards end game gear? Hells yes, sweet incentive.

Is it cool to do them and see the story and learn to play an unfamiliar class or role in the end game group content?

Absolutely.

But I challenge anyone to say that they find it FUN to have to run the expansion starter instances in heroic mode at level 85 on every new character to grind the gear upgrades and Justice Points needed to unlock higher iLevel content.

And I won’t even go into how much sheer joy is to be had in considering having to grind rep to get epic shoulder enchants or gear on your fifth character, even with Tabards.

So, we try and subvert it, to a greater or lesser degree. Are we to be blamed for trying to bypass the system as intended?

Or, and I’m just throwing this out idea there, is subverting the original gearing process exactly what Blizzard expects us to do, and is precisely WHY we have things like the new high-level BoE epics from the new heroic instances dropping like snowflakes in winter?

Crafted epic items, auction house BoEs, new heroic instance quest rewards, the Thrall and Aggra Elemental Bonds questline that gives a nice cloak, etc.

Is being subversive simply the game working as intended?

I think so.

Look at the facts.

I’ve played the game the way it was meant to be played on three characters now, my druid, warrior and hunter. Leveled, geared, got crafting skills, reputation grinds, all that stuff.

I am damn glad to have done it, too. For example, I am proud to have a character maxed in every rep, plus exalted with my guild.

When I have new characters come up now, I don’t have to worry about head enchants because I’ve got one character with max reputation on all factions, and that character can buy the enchant and mail it over.

For weapons, I can gather ore, transmute Truegold, gather or buy Orbs, and use my epic Blacksmithing patterns from rep to make some iLevel 365 weapons… or buy cheap Beermug maces, BoE epic drops from the new instances, etc.

I can craft rings, necklaces and armor that, while intended for PvP, is good enough to get into new content and get the job done, but just crappy enough for PvE that I’m going to want to get rid of it as soon as bloody possible.

I even have BoE gear of incredible power that I can earn on my max level characters through Valor Points, to feed down to my new alts.

But what if I don’t have max level characters to feed my new alts, characters all decked out and done with the content?

Working as intended. If you don’t already have all the content done and maxed on anyone… Blizzard wants you to get out there and do it all, at least once.

In my opinion, the only truly glaring weakness right now is that the epic level shoulder enchants purchasable from rep with Therazane is not bound to account, and the ease of getting that rep has not been reduced the way the Sons of Hodir were towards the end of the expansion.

Yet.

I’ve been preparing my Rogue for max level, because I truly do not want to do a single original heroic, not a one. I want to ding 85, equip gear, and step into a 4.3 Dragon Soul heroic.

To that end, I’ve been seeing how far I can game the system on my Combat Rogue, and how cheaply.

Slow main hand weapon, fast offhand are the Combat preferences.

A Tremendous Tankard O’ Terror goes for about 800 gold on my server, so I bought one. Oops, Cassie had 8 in her bags, and I actually had one I forgot about in my Hunter’s bank. Stupid of me not to check, but point made.

For an offhand, my blacksmith crafted the Brainsplinter, using all personally farmed/transmuted mats. Done.

For a thrown weapon, maybe due to lack of demand the Thorns of the Dying Day are going for a mere 300 gold. Done again.

Sure I’m going to want to upgrade as soon as I can… but these aren’t pure crap, either. These are all weapons that, in terms of stats, would have been great before 4.3 shipped.

For armor… well, there is the obvious.

My max level characters have taken a week off from upgrading their own gear with Valor Points to donate the Bracers of Manifold Pockets and the Rooftop Griptoes. If I was wealthy, I could have easily bought them instead, they get advertised in Trade Chat as Valor boots or bracers, your choice, 5000g or 6000g golod all the time, YMMV on your server.

Still, I wanted to go as cheap as I could as far as I could.

As I said before, once I reach level 85, I’ll be able to do the Thrall and Aggra quest chain, Elemental Bonds, to get the iLevel 365 cloak, Mantle of Doubt. I could simply craft the new iLevel 377 PvP leatherworking cloak Vicious Fur Cloak, but I’d vastly prefer lower iLevel but more PvE oriented gear.

There are 17 item slots to fill, and already 6 are at 365 or better at level 85, plus one quest chain I like to do anyway. :)

I then did dip into my own pockets, and bought one item I’ve been repeatedly tempted by at the auction house. I got the Nightblind Cinch belt for 7000 gold. Maybe they saw me coming, but an upgrade THAT huge means future Valor Points don’t go to a belt, they go to things like necklaces, rings and trinkets. I’m willing to pay it, and be glad.

The rest of the slots ALL have iLevel 377 PvP items that can be crafted with leatherworking and jewelcrafting if I wanted to, but let’s go one step further.

What about the Molten Front?

Yes, yes, I know. Craft some PvP stuff and go have fun, get upgrades in one day that outstrips what you’ll earn after 45 days of Molten Front dailies.

There are still two things to keep in mind.

First, after only three days you can unlock the Molten Front area, and purchase Matoclaw’s Band from Zen’Vorka.

Second… my Rogue is a skinner, and the spider area is a skinner’s paradise. I’m going to want that anyway, so why not at least look at what I get after those three days, right?

Where I’m going with all this, is really that it’s too damn easy to craft or otherwise acquire high level items to bypass the starter heroics for it to have somehow slipped past Blizzard’s attention that we can do it.

No, I think it’s working as intended, and I like the fact that I don’t have to just equip PvP gear to beat the iLevel restrictions, I can go for lower level gear but with better overall stats if I so choose. And I DO so choose.

As I said before, I just think there are a couple areas that could be finished up, like the Therazane rep shoulder enchants being made Bind on Account.

What do you think? Is this all some cunningly designed master plan to give us lots of options and choices, or is it a failure of the Blizzard gearing model?