Honor's Code

In April, I was perusing my Twitter feed when I saw an announcement from Matt Walsh aka Rhidach. Oh, while no one particularly cares about WoW right now, I suppose I should get around to noting I resigned from writing for Blizzard Watch. — Matt Walsh (@Rhidach) April 20, 2016 While I'm going to miss my column and writing about paladins, I don't play WoW anymore and at this point I'm not sure I will in the future. — Matt Walsh (@Rhidach) April 20, 2016 Life has changed SO MUCH in the last year and I just don't have the time to pay the same attention to the game. I will miss it, though! — Matt Walsh (@Rhidach) April 20, 2016 Matt and his wife recently had a baby and I remember well from those days with both my baby Hammers that neither free time nor energy was in great abundance. I’ve wanted to write for  Blizzard Watch  for a long time, going back to their days before they were called Blizzard Watch. Once I heard about Matt stepping down, I contacte...

Today marks the 1000th post to Honors Code. I would never have believed that I would write 1000 posts when I started the blog seven years ago. Looking Back What started out as a Wow blog eventually evolved into SWTOR and now Wildstar, but the peak was tearing through content as a Paladin tank through Wrath of the Lich King. Along the way I've amassed nearly half a million page views. I think over half of those were probably for my "Leveling a Paladin Guide".  I’m still really proud of the fact that it got linked from Blizzard’s own Class Guide page for over two years. Over the years the games have changed, and I've take a break or two. I've posted stuff I'm super proud of, and I've posted stuff I wish I never had. I regret my mistakes, and I relish the good memories. Looking Forward I'm looking to get back to my roots so to speak. Over the next couple of months, I'll prepare for the Wildstar's release and getting back to tanking...

Gravity and Tobold were both discussing the recent sale of Tankspot, and that led to a discussion of monetizing or making money from Blogging. Tobold even has a standing offer that his blog could be bought for a measly sum of $100,000. You can see the details on his blog. Honors Code costs me absolutely nothing but the little time I take to write it. It’s gotten a little harder to find that time since I can’t blog at work any more, but I would still blog even if I didn’t have as many readers. I haven’t checked my numbers in a while but I get anywhere from 300 to 700 hits per day. The most popular page is still my Leveling Guide. Since Honors Code costs me nothing, it doesn’t make any sense to me to try to make money off my blog. I doubt anyone would pay for the content I produce, except for maybe the leveling guide. It got me wondering what my blog or account might be worth. Tobold put a price tag of $100,000 on his blog. I’m no where near as popular as Tobold, so I can’t be worth n...

Is this thing still on? It’s been about a six month break. I enjoyed it. I can’t imagine many people still check this site. Maybe you’re getting this in a feed reader. Hello, again! I won’t be blogging soley about World of Warcraft. There are other games that have my attention. I’m going to talk about them, too. Hey, blogosphere! IT’S HAMMERTIME!!

When I stopped writing Honors Code, I had several people ask me to let them know if I started up another blog. Since I have, in fact, started up a new blog, I thought this medium would be the best way to let my former readers know about it. The blog is called: Ted the Third . (It’s a working title.) Its not a World of Warcraft blog, or even a general gamming and MMO blog. My new blog focuses on a new pursuit of mine. It’s actually not a new pursuit, but it has become more of a focus. The blog talks about my dream to try to become a professional, published writer. It talks about what I’m writing, what I’m learning, and what I’m struggling with. I also sometimes go off-topic and talk about news, or current events. The obligatory first post will fill you in on most of the details. Actually, I’ve started up two blogs, but after some consideration, I’ve decided to keep the Daddy blog private. If you really want to read the Daddy blog, drop me an email and I’ll send you a link. I’m still...

I’m sitting here tonight because I can’t log in to World of Warcraft. This is disappointing but nothing I’m all that upset about. I watched the first half of an NFL Preseason game on FOX and I’ll play a little Knights of the Old Republic after I post this. But those details, as exciting as they are, are not the reason for my post. According to Blizzard, my account renews at tomorrow, 08/20/2010, and I’m having a tough time deciding if I should bother renewing. Heroics are mind numbingly boring, and I overgear them on 3 of my 4 80s. I’d overgear them on my druid if I started playing him for more than a week. We are done with PVE content. I've killed Lich King on my main, and our group has taken so many hits we can’t even attempt hard modes anymore. I've gotten 2 alts almost as geared as my main. Summer I've tried PVP but its been tough. Horde on Nightfall for whatever reason have been losing a ton. It is not uncommon for it to take half a dozen games to get the dail...

Today marks the 3 year anniversary mark of my blog here at Honor's Code. So today, I am reposting the very first post that ever appeared on this blog. "I created this blog to chronicle my thoughts and experiences as a player in Blizzard's wildly popular MMORPG, World of Warcraft. This blog will follow my main, Honorshammer, a level 70 Dwarf Paladin on Altar of Storms. It will also include thoughts on my other characters, Honorshummer, a level 30ish Draenai Hunter, also on Altar of Storms. I don't know if many, or frankly anyone will read this blog, but here it is." That was posted on May 25, 2007. So much has happened to both myself and Paladins and Tankadins during that time.I'm glad the blog has stayed around and that I've managed to find a couple of people to read it on a regular basis. I am so glad that you've joined me on this journey. Honors Code will be going strong on into Cataclysm, though maybe not with the same focus. I hope you continue to ...

I’ve been sitting on this post for weeks, trying to find the right time to post it. I didn’t want to post it on a Monday, but I could never find the right time to do it. I want to go ahead and get this out there now. It seems like major announcements about Cataclysm are coming at a faster and faster pace. I don’t want anyone to think some announcement by Blizzard has prompted this decision so I’m going to go ahead and put this out there. Come Cataclysm, I am a Tank, no more. This is not some rash decision on my part. I've been debating this for several months. I'm usually a person who hems and haws over decisions, thinking and over thinking them. I'm very susceptible to paralysis by analysis. Yet, this decision hasn't been like that. Once I started thinking about it, I've only gotten more sure its the right the thing to do. The natural question is why? Let me state my reasons. This doesn't have anything to do with the state of Paladin Tanks right now. Palad...

My sympathy if you are stuck at work today. You'll get through it. 1. What did you do in the World of Warcraft in 2009 that you’d never done before? I had a max level alt. I got the Hunter to 70 shortly before the end of the Burning Crusade but outside of Gruul's Lair I never really got to do much with him. In Wrath, I've raided up to Lady Deathwhisper on the Hunter. And though it's not some I've NEVER done, in 2009, I voluntarily healed again for the first time since Vanilla. Honors is now Tank/Heal with the Hunter for my DPS needs. I'm literally the swiss army knife I thought my Druid might be. Whatever you need for a group, I'm there. I'm also terribly rusty and I'll regale you with an account of my first time healing soon. 2. What was your favorite new place that you visited? I think Ice Crown is actually too new, so I'm going with Ulduar. The instance was huge, and it was beautiful. The fights were varied, and there was plenty of different t...

So news is out today that I've joined the team at Paladin Schmaladin . Think of it as World of Matticus for Paladins. My first article is up on the site now. It's an analaysis of the new weapons that came out in 3.3. I'll still be writing on my blog as well, so think of it as more of me to love.

So Gravity over at pwnwear asked a question in his blog, and I'd like to address it here. He wrote a post about whether or not you play games other than WoW. I wondered, how unusual am I? The best comparison would be to others in my circumstance: married with kids and a responsible job, do you play other games with any seriousness? I'm in a similar circumstance to Gravity. I'm married with kids, and have a full time job. My daughter is a 4th grader so we have all kinds of extra cirrciular activities she's involved in like Soccer, Band, and Awana. I've been playing WoW for over 4 years now. In that time I haven't really played any other games with any kind of seriousness. Now occasionally, I'll fire up an old game I have like Civilization IV or Knights of the Old Republic. It's like visiting an old friend for a while and those games are still fun even years after their release. I still fire up Madden 2008. Actually I would have kept playing and buying th...

The Blogsphere is experiencing its own bit of drama right now with 3 well read, heavy trafficked bloggers putting their Two Copper. It started with everyone’s favorite Goblin, Gevlon of Greedy Goblin, posting about email conversations between himself and Marko of My Two Copper. Both of these guys run blogs dedicated to making lots and lots of gold in World of Warcraft, and Marko was trying to get Gevlon to advertise for a Gold Guide that Marko made and is trying to sell. Gevlon called on none other than Tobold as a witness to verify certain parts of his account. Tobold was kind enough to reply with a verification of Gevlon’s account. Marko, of course, had his own reply, which seems to have been taken down of this writing, but I still have a copy in my Feed Reader. I found the whole thing at least mildly entertaining, which is to say I got a good chuckle out of it. I do hope Gevlon and Marko have some strong spam filters because Gevlon posted a screen shot with both the...

I had a friend ask me for my TwitterID so we could keep in touch on Twitter. This guy isn’t a WoW player, and I was reluctant to give him my Twitter ID since I a lot of my tweets are WoW related. I suddenly felt like George Costanza from Seinfeld in the episode where Elaine meets Susan. “Worlds are colliding!” he shouts. Suddenly someone from my real life was going to get a peek into my WoW life. It made me a little uncomfortable. The world where I'm known as by my real name was colliding with the world where I'm known as Honorshammer. I’ve tried, unsuccessfully, to explain to some of my non WoW friends that WoW players really aren’t that different than who spend their evenings watching The Office or American Idol . You basically sit in front of an LCD display for a few hours and watch the stories of characters you are emotionally invested in. I could tell the message wasn’t exactly getting through. There are things in our culture that are just more socia...

Way to go, Bear! Blogger Big Bear Butt and his guild Sidhe Devils are doing something really cool that I must share with my readership. (It still humbles me greatly thinking I have a 'readership'). One of their guildies has been diagnosed with Breast Cancer. To show their love and support for their member they are organizing an ingame event. So today, I turn over HonorsCode to the BigBear: On their server Kael’thas (US) , they are organizing a united cross-faction walk across Azeroth will be held on Saturday, November 14th, starting at 2:00 PM Central Time (Kael’thas-US server time). Members of both Alliance and Horde factions are invited to attend. Pink Mageweave Shirts will be handed out for all walkers, and all levels of characters will be welcome. If you’d like, bring your own shirt, or even make it a formal affair with your Festive Pink Dress ! The walk across Azeroth will not be a race of individuals , it will be a group march to show Julie our love and support. We d...

This is going to be kind of a quick post. First off, I'm working on the UI guide which should be finished this week. From a single post, it's grown into a 3 post series. I'm going to have to coin my own term like Big Bear Butt did with Bearwalls. Round Table Friday night, I made it home in time from an absolutely wonderful Anniversary night out with Mrs.Hammer to join up with Nibuca, Fimlys, Matticus of World of Matticus , Stoneybaby of Big Hit Box , Graylo of Gray Matter, and Saresa of Destructive Reach. We had a fantastic time discussing some of the changes that happened in 3.1 and 3.2, as well as discussing what's coming up in 3.3. I came away very impressed with the other members of the panel. They are as intelligent and well spoken in person as they are in their writing. Matticus reminded me a lot of Grant Imahara , and I absolutely loved listening to Saresa's accent. Stoneybaby made great points throughout the discussion and I came away from th...

So last Friday, I let you know that I’d be making a special announcement today. Well here it is. I’ve been very excited over the summer to follow the development of a new MMORPG called The Old Republic as it was demoed at the various conventions like Penny Arcade Expo and Electronic Entertain Expo. It’s being made by LucasArts/BioWare and published by EA. I have wanted, on a couple of occasions, to blog about the new game. I never did, other than a small post when I first heard about the game. I don't feel it's appropiate for me to talk about TOR in this space, and let me explain why. Now this is my site and I can and have talked about just about whatever I've wanted to in the past. I fully expect Blizzard and Bioware to have an intense competition for subscribers once TOR is Live. This site is linked directly off the main Blizzard site. I didn’t feel it would appropriate for someone to follow that link off of Blizzard's site and then discover a blog basically advertisi...

I received a comment on one of my posts that made use of name calling and vulgarity. Just so you so, starting right now, if you use name calling and vulgarity in your comments, they won't be published. I have no problem with someone disagreeing with me, and I try encourage thoughtful discussion in my comments. You never know, I just might learn something. But using vulgarity or name calling will not promote thoughtful discussion, and those comments will not be published in the future.

I've got a special announce coming on next Friday.

The dilemma I'm faced with today is how to speak about an activity, but not come across as passing judgment on those who choose to participate in it. Let's see if I can accomplish that. The activity I'm talking about is the selling of Proto Drakes. Certain guilds are selling spots in their Ulduar 10 runs. They know these fights so well, and overgear them to such a degree that they can essentially 9 man all the achievements and Hard Modes needed for the Rusted Proto Drake. The 10th person pays some large amount of WoW gold, transfers to that guild's server, does the run, gets the achievements and the Drake, and transfers back home. I've heard figures up to 30,000 WoW gold. This is very similar to how guilds would sell 'Bear runs' towards the end of Burning Crusade. There was a special Amani Bear mount which could only be obtained by completing Zul'Aman in a specified amount of time. My guild came close a couple of times, but ultimately we never got it. Bu...

I thought while I was away I would share some pictures from the way back machine. These are screenshots from my time in Heroes Inc during early Tier 4. This was our first Attumen the Huntsman kill in Karazhan. Wichita the Shaman would morph into Ellevis the Death Knight in Wrath of the Lich King and would found the current guild I am in, Unusual Suspects. Lakini is still our favorite Boomkin. Zadorr and Origami were with us through much of Ulduar and have recently stopped raiding. This was one of our early kills of Maiden of Virtue. Brambles, the Mage would morph first into Chickenpox the Death Knight and later into Taxiderm the Hunter, and remains a key part of our team. You can also see Agamengnome, who recently joined Unusual Suspects and raids 10 mans with Perp's team. This last shot is some of the same faces, but with the addition of a Night Elf Hunter named Jagdelf. Jag became Magnusson the Holy/Ret Paladin and was with us all through Ulduar, even banging away at tossing how ...