Honor's Code

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...

Last night my Hunter, Jyger, made it Level 85. I’m fairly certain I’m the last person in our guild to hit 85, in fact, I think a couple of guys have already hit 85 with their second toon. I dinged after completing the Crucible of Carnage quest line in Twilight Highlands. The path I took was Vash’ir, Deepholme, Twilight Highlands, a little Uldum and then back to Twilight. I’ve talked a good bit about my experiences in Vash’ir previously and I think it was my favorite zone as I leveled up. Deepholme took a little while to get going, and levels 83 and 84 really dragged. I started off with in Marksman spec with my trusty Lion, Aslan, in Vash’ir. As fights got longer I switched over to my Ravager, Droideka, but he was getting his rear handed to him in Deepholme. I switched over to Polar Bear for a little while, but then I found a Shale Spider about halfway through my questing. I really liked the Shale Spider, so I switched to Beast Mastery (Shale Spiders are Exotic). I named him Rocky. ...

This weekend I finished up Vash’ir. I really enjoyed the zone. The underwater setting was different from anything else I’ve done in WoW, and it really didn’t take long to get used to questing in a true 3D world. After the one unpleasant encounter with marauding Alliance, I didn’t have any more unwanted PVP. Several times in the zone I saw Alliance and Horde questing side by side. I got just about every achievement I think you can get out of the zone. Because someone asked, I wanted to show that yes, traps do work under water. There were so many interesting quest chains in Vash’ir from the Pirates of the Caribbean opening to the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea ending. During one chain, you live out the story of a Naga Battle Maiden and set up the Battle at the end of the zone. You pick up that chain where exploring an ole High Elf city. I saw statues of Lestharia Vashj and Queen Ashara. Somehow I think she is going to look just a little bit different when we finally see her as a Raid B...

Jyger was still plugging away in Vash'ir Wednesday night. The zone and quests were fun. I came across one quest where the quest giver is a Goblin Shaman. He is using Earth Elementals to mine and dig, and it brought to mind some of the incongruity of the combination. Goblins seem to be more about using everything around them for profit. That just doesn't seem to fit with the idea of Shamans who regard the Elements as silent associates, who work for a time to aid their mortal allies before being released back to the Elemental Plane. I'm still amazed by the questions in general chat asking where something is, or how to complete a quest. Where is this place they will ask, when the breadcrumb quests pretty clearly states, leave the cave and go west. Hmm, what direction should I go to find the next cave? The Devs seemed to have added some guards to the caves as I saw an Alliance Warrior get destroyed by one when he attacked me. About halfway through Vash'ir, I would guess, a...

Once I installed Cataclysm, the first thing I did was to get Old World Flying trained on my Hunter. Then I hit up the Mining and Engineering trainers for the Cataclysm level stuff. I had an old pair of green "of the monkey" gloves enchanted with Gatherer (+5 Mining, Skinning, Herbing), and I made the Engineering Goblin Mining Hat (+5 Mining). Then I used my Wormhole Generator: Northrend and ported up to Shoal'azar Basin. In order to mine Elementium, the Cataclysm equivalent to Saronite, I would need just 465 mining. Elementium requires 475, but with the Gloves and Hat, that will give me 475 skill. The plan was to use Shoal'azar because the completion would be minimal. The whole strategy for this opening night was 'hit 'em where they ain't'. Everyone was going to be in Mt. Hyjal, and Vash'ir fighting over Obsidium veins (the Cataclysm equivalent to Cobalt). This plan worked out better than I could have ever hoped. I was getting skill ups even of...

Tonight is the last night of Wrath. In just a few hours, we'll be leveling again in Cataclysm. But in a real sense, it feels like it was over two week ago. Dalaran is as empty as Shattrah as everyone has returned to the reshaped Azeroth. I didn't finish all of my pre-Cataclysm goals. I didn't log in Sunday, and I won't be logging tonight. The Baltimore-Pittsburgh game was an absolute classic and tonight's New England / New York collision promises to be the same. For the first time, I won't be doing a midnight release for a Warcraft Expansion. Cataclysm will not start in earnest for me until I get home from my small group on Tuesday night. There are still a couple of pets I wanted to tame and some general organizing of my bag, bank and bank alt. I had moved my bank alt to Silvermoon during the Elemental Invasion because I got tired of logging into him and him not being to do anything because the bank and the AH NPCs had evacuated. The Elementals left Silvermoon ...

I’ve made some changes based on the comments, and may continue to do so. As I worked up my Hunter’s Engineering, I got to the point of choosing between Goblin and Gnome Engineering. I’m doing this with an eye towards Cataclysm. I found very little help in several web searches, so I thought I would use my own reasoning as a guide to others who might be facing this choice. There was some talk about removing specializations from professions which would remove the choice entirely. I actually hoped this was route the developers would take. The profession specializations have been removed from Leatherworking, Tailoring, and  Blacksmithing. They have NOT been removed from Engineering or Alchemy. Jewelcrafting, Inscription, and Enchanting never had specializations to begin with. As of this writing (11.27.2010) Goblin and Gnome Engineering are still in play. However, there are no known Goblin or Gnome specialization recipes for 80 to 85, and if you base it on the materials needed the las...