How have we gone so far in so short a time, even with the Recruit-A-Friend XP bonus?

Well, Cassie has begun running Alex and myself through instances, and with that bonus the levels are flying past.

RFD, Scholomance, Stratholme live and Stratholme undead, just that fast we are already up to being able to do the delving deeps of Blackrock Depths. With each instance, even with Cassie’s level 85 presence, we see two or even three level increases when you count in the quests.

As we chased after Cassie in the Scholomance, Alex suddenly announced that “my official nickname is the Cute Kitty of DOOM!”

And he IS a cute kitty of doom. He loves dashing and pouncing. He also really loves having Cassie clear the way of mobs so that Alex can loot them. He’s cool with that.

Nice work if you can get it, but I hated to break it to him that in normal groups, you can’t just run around looking cute and once everyone else kills all the stuff enjoy the loot. 

Then I stopped and thought about my recent Dragon Soul LFR runs. Now that I really think about it…

We completed Stratholme Undead a few nights ago, and I checked to see what the next instance was up on the list. Blackrock Depths? Oh, I love BRD. I have ALWAYS liked BRD, even when it was a mammoth unbroken slog for 5 hours, when you had to go in four damn times to sync everyone up on the escort quest for Onyxia attunement because someone forgot to clicky before we started, etc. I know that place by heart, all of it’s twists and turns and tricks.

I informed Cassie of our destination decision for the next night of playing, and she put her leather-clad foot down.

NO MORE RUNS.

At least, no more runs until we had quested through, in her words, the “must see quests” of Badlands.

Awww :(

Just kidding.

In the Badlands, there are a few quests that both Cassie and I loved when we did them, quests full of humor and style.

There are a lot of quests throughout the revampled Cataclysm 1 – 60 areas that Cassie lumps together as ‘gimmick’ quests. Gimmick quests can consist of many things, but the core of a gimmick quest is anything that replaces your normal, familiar character mechanics with a new action bar and new abilities only relevant to that one quest.

Cassie doesn’t generally like gimmick quests. She’s playing her character to play her character, not to (as an example) suddenly be the driver in a tank simulator in order to proceed with the story in that area.

All that aside, the quest that Cassie knew Alex HAD to do is an early quest in Fuselight.

Fuselight is a gnome city perched high atop a rocky peak in the Badlands. The ‘must see’ quest is called “It’s Goat Time, Baby“. The quest consists of you taking a blasting stick and walking around the perimeter of Fuselight, blasting goats off the peak.

When you use the blasting stick, the goat is launched away from you as if shot from a cannon, to fall into the canyon beyond.

If you haven’t done the quest yourself, I’ll let you ponder that mental image for a second.

Okay, let’s move on.

I took Alex to Fuselight, went through the prelim quests, got him his blasting stick and the OMG quest, and then got taken violently ill and had to leave him be. I came back to the office a half hour later to find him STILL blasting goats off the peak in delight, or as he put it, ‘goat punching’. He was still going at it enthusiastically and experimenting with arcs of travel, shooting goats at distant peaks, and generally delighting in goat punching mayhem.

I showed him how, by moving around to be on the other side of the goat from Fuselight facing in, he could punch the goats to land INTO the city, and thus could begin shooting goats at buildings, NPCs, and yes, other players. Much more fun was thus had.

If a few friends felt like it, I imagine a little game of Tag could be conducted by shooting goats at each other, but I would never do such a thing myself. It would be unseemly.

What surprised me most about this was the quest item activator button.

On most quests, you are given a task, say “punch 12 goats off the mountain”, and the button appears next to the quest on your screen. You can easily push the button to use the item, activate the goat punching blast stick, whatever it is while you do your quest.

Once the 12 goats or whatever requirement is complete, generally the button vanishes off your screen. You might still be able to use the item, but you’d have to open up your bags and click on it from there, or drag it to your button bar.

For this quest, he must have punched, I’m not kidding, hundreds of goats off that damn mountain, and the button never vanished.

Makes me wonder if Blizzard knew people might like to keep that quest and item active forever, and come back every once in a while for some therapeutic goat punching.

As we ran around punching goats, Alex taught me something I didn’t know about the game.

When we group up in a party, Alex likes to mark himself with a skull and me with a star, so even in the crowded streets of Stormwind City we can find each other. We run around everywhere marked.

As we were running around Fuselight, Alex decided he wanted to involve his non-combat pet in the action, and so went to click on the pet and mark it with a diamond.

I started to tell him you couldn’t mark non-combat pets, and before I could, he did! Put a damn mark right on his pet bunny.

… yes, Alex the Bunnyslayer runs around EVERYWHERE with a pet bunny. What?

I prefer to think of it as Alex being haunted by the ghost of bunnies past.

The other ‘must do’ quests in Badlands in my opinion are the tall tales told by a certain dwarf, gnome and orc over near Dragon’s Mouth.

Alex was enthralled at the idea of the first quest, where I promised him he’d get to punch Deathwing in the mouth. I neglected to tell him that it is Deathwing in his mortal incarnation, and so he was very disappointed when he finally saw him. Note to Blizzard – the child in all of us would like to punch Deathwing the GIANT DRAGON in the mouth, please. Much obliged.

Along the way, something came up that reminded me of just how long the memory of a young child can be.

He was controlling the dwarf Theldurin and punching his way up the Scar of the Worldbreaker, punching through rock walls and Earth Elementals, and he says to me, “I like punching rock guys. It’s been a lifelong dream of mine.”

His saying that instantly threw me back to years ago, when I was leveling a character in Badlands, and he was watching me climb up into those southern areas of the Badlands where Earth Elementals gather. I’d ride up there or run up there, kill the elementals and mine the surrounding ore. Had to have been during Burning Crusade, and he would watch me play, see me kill ‘rock guys’, and then ask me if he could play my character to kill them for a while and I’d let him kill rock guys for a while.

Years ago this was, so it had to be when he was five or six, and here we are now, fulfilling his ‘lifelong dream’ of punching rock guys himself with his own character.

Ah, that all of our life ambitions could be so easily realized.

As of today we’ve completed the ‘must see’ quests of Badlands, and hopefully tonight we’ll be able to go through the joy that is Blackrock Depths.

Our goal is to continue to play until Alex the Druid reaches level 55. At that point, he will achieve a second ‘lifelong dream’.

He will be able to create a Death Knight.

From the moment I upgraded his account, he has spent some time every couple of days on the ”New Character” screen, choosing the Death Knight class and trying out the appearance on various races.

I’m frankly curious to see what he finally chooses. I’ve told him you can only ever have one Death Knight on a server, so he has to choose his race and appearance wisely. Whatever he picks is going to be exciting for me, since I deleted my old Death Knight (that I had even bought the DK undead flying mount for!) just so I can pick the exact same thing and level with him.

I told him that you can’t create a Death Knight until you have at least one character to level 55, and so that is a burning goal of his. Will he continue playing his druid past 55 once he has a Death Knight? Only time will tell.

Perhaps having a kickass looking transmog set for his druid will help. Effraeti was kind enough to design one specifically for him, in his favorite color, orange, and he is delighted and excited. Maybe exploring throughout Outlands looking like a pumpkin will do the trick?

His delight in the goat punching quest, his fun at punching his way up the Scar until he punched Deathwing in the nose… those were both memorable moments in the game, epic moments that I know he will remember long after he’s forgotten questing on his druid.

Which brings me to my question for you, dear friends.

What other quests in the game would you consider to be the “must play” quests?

What are the quests that, if your friend were to start playing the game for the very first time, you would say to them, “Oh you’ve GOT to go do this, this is so cool!”

I have a few others in mind, one small chain in particular on Horde side I love, but I’d really like to hear yours!

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?

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!

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.

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.

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?

Superb.

Say it again, I dare you.

Su-perb.

I have just read that paragraph, and I hereby share it with you.

From the master of the true essence of Star Wars Role Playing that is Darths & Droids, I bring you;

Always know where the escape pods or life boats or similar such devices are located. This includes biplanes attached to zeppelins. Whenever you board a commercial vessel, scout it out and plan your escape route in case of iceberg, fire, or sahuagin attack. Memorise all paths to the means of escape, so you can follow them in pitch blackness. Even when carrying a cat cage and flamethrower and being chased by an alien carnivore.

Words to live your role playing life by, my friends, with an example that is pure genius. Such a perfect association unleashed with stark brevity!

Truly, words to live by.

Or, in the case of retcons, words to think you lived by while actually condemned with the ultimate horror all unknowing.

That’s right.

The true moral of the story?

We as gamers know what it is.

The player can go through all those procedures, memorize the layouts, practice the routes blindfolded, perform preventive maintenance on the life rafts and even stock the ships with food (and a means of opening the cans, har har), but no matter how hard you try, if the GM is in a bad mood, your character just got impregnated in her sleep by an evil alien between game sessions, and there is not a single damned thing you can do about it.

All you can do is suck it up and reroll with the punches, reroll with the punches.

They had just completed the server first Glory of the Cataclysm Raider earlier, so I thought I’d pop in and say hi and grats in person.

I found them in discussion on whether or not it was possible to four-man the Conclave of Wind.

They apparently do mount runs. A lot.

I was about to head out and go to bed when Shadowson asked me, “You think you’d join us as a tank to five man it?”

Ummm… you know what? It’s been a very long day.

“Sure.”

Let the record show that on this evening, four stalwart, skilled adventurers, brave and true, and one misfit bear boldly entered into the Throne of the Four Winds.

• Shadowson the Shadow Priest
• Kissinger the Mage
• Pumpken the Resto Shaman
• Randomski the Prot Paladin
• Bigbearbutt the bacon butted

Yes, it is in fact possible to down the Conclave of Wind with five players. We did it on our second attempt.

We won’t speak of my incredible fail on the first attempt, ‘mkay?

Shadowson healed as Shadow DPS while I tanked on Anshal, Randomski tanked Nezir with Pumpken healing, and Kissinger… well, Kissinger blew up Rohash.

There was much hopping back and forth by Pumpken, Shadowson and Kissinger all trying to do the work of a full raid.

In the end, I felt the thrill of victory over a challenge I didn’t even expect to have put in front of me, a challenge we didn’t even know would be possible or not.

I think that is why it tasted all the sweeter.

Al”Akir, what to say about Al’Akir…

I went as Kitty, and I found out that it is possible to be thrown off the ledge by a tornado, get back up and be dropped in the NEXT tornado, and then again for a third time.

At least my kitty looks cute floating in midair.

Good thing, because I sure as hell spent a lot of time doing it.

Oh, and Al’Akir?

Easier than Conclave of Wind, and just as dead.

What a surprisingly good way to end an otherwise crappy day.

If you happen to be one of the folks that is feeling bored with Looking For Raid, and wondering what in the world there is left to do in the game…

May I humbly suggest you get three of your closest friends and see how much fun clearing older raids might be?

Sure, ICC and Ulduar spring to mind as tasty little targets, but why not see what other kinds of crazyness you can get up to?

The World of Warcraft is your oyster, after all. This is as overpowered as you’re ever going to feel before Mists of Pandaria sweeps away all before it.

Let your mind run riot, man.  What do you have to lose?

My thanks to Shadowson and Team Wanda, for the unlooked-for opportunity to have a little fun.

I am obviously biased, but I happen to think my Rogue looks incredibly badass wearing full Darkmantle gear, especially considering how suddenly rare that look is thanks to Blizzards rather draconian class quest slaughter, and insanely high priced replica Darkmoon gear.

But the awesome look is part of the problem.

When you look that good, a crappy looking weapon stands out like a zombie in the nursery.

The dagger isn’t an issue, I’m not sure I’ve even seen a bad dagger design.

The fist weapon though… blech.

I searched around, found a really nice fist weapon design I thought would look great with the Darkmantle set, the Nexus-Claw.

Nexus-Claw, part of a set of claws released in Burning Crusade that mirrored an awesome but hard-to-get set from Zul’Gurub, is eminently easy to obtain. You simply fly out to Netherstorm in Outlands, visit the exotic weapons dealer at the Consortium area of the Stormspire, and buy them. You don’t even need rep. He only has one of each of the claws at a time (the other one is the Void-Talon), but wait for a day or two, they should return. It’s not like Netherstorm is a hub of activity anymore.

I went out and bought them, and thought myself something of a smarty-pants for getting great looking items without effort. You know, because Darkmantle was so freaking easy to get.

When I went to transmog my main hand weapon, though, the Perforator, I encountered a teeny, weenie little problem.

They are indeed both Fist Weapons.

The problem lies in the fact that the Perforator is a one-hand weapon, and thus can be used in either hand. The Nexus-Claw and Void-Talons are hand specific, main hand and off hand respectively. Or the other way around, whatever.

What I have found is that I can’t transmog my one hand Fist Weapon with the hand specific Fist Weapons.

Son of a bitch.

Do you know how many great looking Fist Weapons there are in the game? And of those, do you know how many old school ones are hand specific?

Just… crap.

In retrospect I understand what the deal is. The one hand Fist Weapons display bilateral symmetry. Most of the hand-specific Fist Weapons do not. Pop the appearance of an Off Hand claw on a Main Hand weapon, and you’ll likely be holding the blade or something, while the handle is waving in the breeze.

I guess if I had given it any thought, I’d have thought that the appearance would mirror over if on an opposite hand.

Clearly, I was wrong. Damnit.

Fine. Be that way.

I’ll just have to go to Badlands and do The Day That Deathwing Came quest to get Theldurin’s Fist.

So there, nyah.

Gabe was talking about an upcoming game he is playing called Kingdoms of Amalur, and said;

A big part of the reason I play games is for “new art”. That is the thing more often than not that keeps me progressing. What will the next level or zone look like?

As soon as he said it, I knew it was true for me.

Before I go on about what that sparked in my brain housing group though, I want to say, I never heard of Kingdoms of Amalur before. I HAVE heard of a game that Gabe compared it to… Skyrim. Gabe seemed to think Kingdoms of Amalur had all the lore and exploring depth of Skyrim, but with much more entertaining combat gameplay, and with more beautiful worlds to experience.

Huh.

All I heard talk about a few months ago, at least before SWTOR came out, was “Oh, Skyrim, Skyrim is so awesome, all I want to do is play Skyrim, oh I just want to have Skyrim’s giant-destroying shouty babies.”

To hear Gabe, who I respect, say that he thought Kingdoms of Amalur was more enjoyable than Skyrim made me sit up and take notice.

I saw the trailer for it on Youtube, okay, nice trailer, but I’m not playing a movie, I’m playing a game. Much like cover art, a movie trailer can show you awesomesauce , but reflect nothing of the final gameplay experience. Show me the gameplay.

SHOW ME the gameplay!

Then I found this;

Okay. Huh.

I haven’t said this in years. Actually, I think I haven’t said this in a decade. Maybe I said it for Starcraft II.

I HAVE TO BUY THAT GAME.

Curt Schilling, who I am actually aware of and also respect, is the design studio head behind this? Oh shit, is THIS the game his studio is coming out with?

And wait a minute, WHO is behind the lore? R.A. Salvatore?

Hmmm… I dunno, that could be a plus or a minus. He is the man responsible for giving us Drizzt, after all… and giving everyone that wanted to play an angst-ridden vampire in D&D and wasn’t allowed to the Dark Elf race for a replacement.

What he did by introducing scimitars alone into a medieval setting!

But on the other hand, I did love his writing. At a time when books based in D&D were mostly crap, his brought actual character and personality and placed them above stats, an incredible concept at the time.

As far as Todd McFarlane being behind the art design…

I know this is out of style these days, the cool kids mock Todd McFarlane, but I was a fan of the Spawn art style back in the first 50 issues. The characters I loved were the Medieval Spawn and Angela characters that Neil Gaiman created for Todd McFarlane for the Spawn comics, but the art was all Todd.

Something to remember. Neil Gaiman was responsible for my favorite character designs in Spawn, but the art style was all Todd’s, and as long as he is doing the art style of this game without the lore, that excites me.

Not interests, not intrigues, excites.

I really like what I see in that video.

A game world originally designed to be as huge as an MMO, made into a single player game? Character classes that are organic, growing and changing direction as you place points in different ways in skills that sound cool to you as you level?

Oh, hell yes. Sign my ass RIGHT up.

Everything I love about WoW, but without people.

On second thought, maybe it’s not THAT solid a must have after all.