What, in your own opinion, is the easiest faction to start to grind on for rep as a new level 80? I know there is the "championing" but with dailies etc, what seems to be the easiest?

The first one you do is the easiest. Why? Because you're not sick of running any of the Heroics yet, so it's all fair game, heh. After that you lose a little drive. In all seriousness, the Ebon Blade seems the easiest so far. Not only do they have multiple massive quest chains in Icecrown, they also have 3 dailies you do in one little area, and the tabard you can wear in Heroics. If I tossed on my Ebon Blade tabard right after hitting Exalted with Wyrmrest, I think I'd be Ebon Blade exalted by now, too. I put on an Argent Crusade tabard instead and I'm only sitting in early Revered with them.

Your experiences may vary and I'm willing to bet our readers will have other opinions, and that's totally fine. Heck, I think they should toss in their thoughts, too. It might help you pick and choose a little more, you know? Multiple opinions is great. I definitely think it's the Ebon Blade, though.

Gartifarh asked...

One thing that always annoys me about helping out freinds level up in Northrend has been them on their 100% ground mounts or 60% flyers. To make this easier, are there any multi-passenger flying mounts? Or any plans to bring them in?

I'm sure we'll see these in the future but there aren't any now as far as we know there are no plans to have them yet. A day or two ago someone asked about the aerial siege vehicles that were in Wintergrasp in beta, and this dovetails into that a little bit. They were there in beta, and one of them held more than one person. For some reason they disappeared, and I don't think we know whether that was for technical reasons or for balance reasons. They didn't like normal flight in Wintergrasp, so I wouldn't be surprised if they just wanted to keep the battle grounded. Either way, they've tried to do it, and whether it was a success or not we're not sure, but we know they've at least worked on it. It would not shock me to see an obscenely expensive multi-passenger flying mount one day.

When that day is? No idea.

Damatastre asked...

I just got my blacksmithing to 400 and learned the socket bracers and socket gloves recipes. I was curious to find out if there are any other available socketing recipes, so I searched wowwiki and came up with a socket for a one handed weapon. Unfortunately, there was no additional information on it. Is this recipe available for Blacksmiths to do? If so, do you have any idea where to find it?

Blacksmiths get to add sockets to their own bracers and gloves. They also get to create Belt Buckles to sell to others, to add a socket to belts. The Socket One-Handed Weapon never made it into the game in a way that could be used, it was just seen in the game files. I'm not sure whether it even made it into beta or not, but I don't think it did. I think they decided not to use that one and go with bracers/gloves instead, because all of the profession-unique 'enchants' overwrite real enchantments from enchanting. Would you really pass up something like Mongoose as a tank/melee for one more gem? In some cases sure, but most of the time you would just laugh at that and go get the real enchant instead of some +stamina gem.

Bracers/Gloves you're pretty assuredly gonna go for the gem, since its a clear +stat upgrade over an enchantment. Weapons are a little more varied and unique. You can't get something like Mongoose in a gem unless it's a metagem, and being able to socket multiple metagems would be absurd considering how good some of them are.

Tags: argent-crusade, blacksmithing, enchants, eternal-belt-buckle, exalted, faction, featured, knights-of-the-ebon-blade, mongoose, mounts, passenger-mounts, reputation, revered, siege-vehicles, smithing, socket-bracers, socket-gloves, sockets, tweet-this, wintergrasp, wyrmrest-accord

Filed under: Blacksmithing, Analysis / Opinion, Factions, Enchants, Wrath of the Lich King, The Queue