Honor's Code

When we last left our intrepid adventure, Honorshammer, his guild had broken up and he was headed for new realms to conquer. I really had no conception how much the guild breakup would impact me. The game just wasn't the same without my old crew. That is to take nothing away from the new guild I joined. It was a great group of guys, but something was off. I was really torn about how I was spending my time online. Though the blog and Blizzard Short Story contests, I had a rekindled a love of writing, and there was a huge tension between time spent writing and time spent playing. My son was also getting to an age where sudden afks (away from keyboard) were real possibilities. No Pressure What I needed was a 'no-pressure toon.' A group needs their tanks to be bedrock members.I needed more flexibility to play when I wanted, some weeks a little and some weeks a lot. I don't think you can really do that as a tank. The most fun I was having at the time were the nigh...

Shoveling snow. Stanis never thought that when he and Gerald signed up for the Argent Crusade his days would be filled with this menial task. We'll see the world , Gerald had said. We'll be great heroes , Gerald had said. On the outskirts of the Argent Tournament Grounds, in northeastern Icecrown, Stanis worked alongside a half dozen other knights as they cleared a bank of snow. A pile of fresh lumber to build new Bolvar Fordragon Memorial training facility sat in a neat pile nearby. At any time Highlord Tirion Fordring would arrive to check on the progress. Stanis leaned on his shovel. Here he stood, on the roof of the world, as it passed him by. With the Lich King defeated, the Scourge had become almost sedate. They could still deadly if provoked as poor Gerald had learned the hard way on their patrol three months ago. The new recruits from Hearthglen told of great gains being made against the scourge, but also of the terrible carnage of Deathwing's Cataclysm....

.....must come to an end. I know a guild breakup is the definition of a first world problem, but I'm still feeling a little down tonight. I should be preparing for a raid that isn't going to happen. My guild has made the decision to cease raiding operations effective immediately. Our guild was small one, 12 to 15 people. My raid leader was the guild leader. We talked for a while last night. He explained his reasons. I completely understood his reasons. I completely supported his decision. He was doing the right thing for the right reasons. He has my full and unwavering support. Most of the guild is transferring to a PvP Server. We are becoming a PVP guild. They will be doing LFRs and PvP. PvE raiding is done. Football players on the verge of retirement talk about being done with the game before the game is done with you. I'm not done with WoW. I don't know that I can truly express how much I don't want to be on a PvP server. Apparently the one they have...

WoW’s next class? It needs to be the Fighter-Mage. Basically this idea came about because I love tanking, but I prefer ranged DPS to melee DPS. The only way to have both Ranged DPS and tanking would be to roll a druid, but if you don’t enjoy Boomkin and Guardian you are out of luck. It’s time to change that. In my days playing Pen and Paper DnD there was this concept of playing a dual classed character. What if we brought that to WoW? Currently you are limited to 2 specs from a choice of three. What I propose is to make that a choice of 2 specs from a choice of 33. Maybe you are an Arm Warrior/Frost Mage, or  a Holy Priest/Demonology Warlock. I would make mine a Protection Paladin/Beastmastery Hunter. Since the introduction of the new talent system, the individual specs of the classes have become more and more distinct. Each spec has a specific kit of tools. A Retribution Paladin has more in common with an Arms Warrior than he does with a Prot or Holy Paladin. He can’t eve...

We know the Sha are the last breath of the Old God Y'Shaarj. Y’Shaarj had seven heads, so it follows there would be seven sha. So far, only six have been revealed. Those six are Fear, Doubt, Hatred, Despair, Anger, and Violence. We don’t know the seventh. However, I think Blizzard may have accidently let the name of the seventh Sha out in a preview of the new 5.2 raid. Community Manger Draxxari was interviewing Lead Encounter Designer, Ion “Watcher” Hazzikostas. You can read the entire blog here . What I want to concentrate on is their preview of Tortos. Ion: Along with asking why we fight, and learning that our true enemy is war itself, a major theme of the Mists of Pandaria has been killing turtles. This raid encounter elevates that motif to all-new heights, presenting players with the chance to fight a huge turtle, and small turtles, and also the ability to kick one of the small turtles into the big turtle. What more could you ask for? Emphasis added. Our true enemy i...

Tier 14 has been a weird tier for us. It's been the most exciting and the most frustrating tier of my WoW career. Old Faces in New Places This was the tier where we got the band back together. Most of my guild mates followed me to SWTOR about midway through the Firelands patch. One by one, we quit SWTOR and came back to WoW. One of our guys had actually stayed in WoW and found a guild on Nesingwary. As we came back, we all just joined up with him. As the tier wore on, it became increasing clear that we needed to be back on our own and recently we've made that a reality. The core of our team formed during Karazhan, and we really peaked in Ulduar. It has been great to have familiar voices in vent and be raiding with this team again. Frustrations Throughout this entire tier, our team has been frustrated by attendance issues. We had to cancel way too many raid nights simply because we couldn't field a team. I know, absolutely know, that we could have gotten farther th...

We have news from the PTR about Patch 5.2 and storm clouds of worry and concern are gathering over the land of the Tankadins. Paladin - For Protection, we do have plans to try and lower the value of haste relative to dodge and parry. We don't want to make haste terrible for paladins, but we agree that it's odd for it to be better than more traditional tank stats. It might require a nerf to Shield of the Righteous to do this, but our goal is not to nerf survivability overall. We just wanted to provide you some context if you see odd changes to tanking abilities. http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/7593740975?page=45#884 Yes, my friends, that is none other than GC uttering the N word. A little further on in the thread, GC is asked to explain his reasoning. Again in the words of the Crab. The game just isn't currently designed to support it.  It creates potential problems such as:   - A Prot paladin competing with a Frost DK or Ret paladin over gear, meanin...