Just a quick one for you here.  My wife’s family has a mini Pumpkin carving contest every year.  Five or so of us carve pumpkins the week of Halloween and a few neighbors from across the street judge.

There is no prize in this contest, only pure glory.  In that way, I suppose it’s much like an achievement! 

Anyhow, I think we did a pretty good job this year, and thought I’d share the pics.  Halloween is my favorite holiday, after all. 

The fist pic is all of the pumpkins, and the next two are close-ups of the winner.

Not bad eh?  Pictures don’t QUITE do them justice, of course.  That Frankenstein is pretty good looking, though.  From a little ways away he almost looked REAL.  Creepy.  Guess who carved him? 

That’s right, I won it for the second year running.  Woot! 

PTD has earned the achievement [Pumpkin Carving Master]!

I’ll be honest.  I generally don’t cover "news" or events in game.  There are plenty of blogs that do that, and they do it far better than I ever would.  Suffice it to say that I have been having a blast with the Halloween events, including the ultra-cool zombie/undead invasion.  Sure, I ended up zombified in a couple of bad situations, and it did make things a little tricky here and there, but I’m not here to cry about anything.  I think Blizzard once again showed just why their game is so much better than the others.

How is that you say? 

The zombie event is all people would talk about.  That right there is a success, in my mind.  No matter what percentage of those people were complaining. 

Anyhow, so what has old PTD been up to? 

Well, I’ve been back on an alt kick, as I am wont to do from time to time.  Specifically I have finally gotten serious about leveling my warrior.  Shortly after the arrival of the Burning Crusade, I rolled a Draenei warrior.  I just thought a Draenei would look particularly cool in full plate armor with giant, nasty weapons.  Anyhow, he’s been languishing at level 42 for a long, long time. 

The thing about warriors, for me, was that though they were VERY tough to kill, they also took a lot longer to kill anything.  In my limited playtime, I’m more likely to level classes that just blow mobs out of the water, hence my Druid (who leveled kitty) and Hunter.  Both those classes just flat out mowed mobs down.

The Warrior, once he reached his 40s, played like he was fighting through molasses.  Steady, to be sure, but awfully slow.  I think the big, slow 2-handers I was using contributed to this, this feeling, but dual wielding never seemed much better.

So he was forgotten for a long time.  Joining my host of low to mid-40s characters, like my Rogue, Shaman and Priest.  I didn’t know if I’d ever go back to him, and he sat around gathering dust.

Then, the patch hit, and a few things conspired to make me decide to pick an alt to focus on for awhile.  The fact is that when 3.0 hit I was a little less interested in spending time on either of my 70s.  Here is why:

• 25 Man Nerfs – I really have no desire to continue doing 25 mans now that they are on easy mode.  I don’t begrudge those of you who are enjoying your time in them, seeing things you never thought you’d see.  I certainly can respect that.  But for me they are a shadow of their former selves, and are no longer a priority for me.
• The coming race to 80 – I am no longer all that focused on gear for my two 70s.  Both have MORE than adequate equipment to last them quite some time in Wrath leveling, and because I’m not interested in "progressing" in raids, I have no real need to upgrade.
• Talent tree changes – There are a lot of interesting new tricks to try for every class.  I toyed a bit with the new resto talents for my Tree, but again, I don’t plan to do much with him right now.  Ditto for the hunter, who is still in search of the elusive Nuramoc.

Once I realized these things, I took an inventory of my non 70 alts.  I have a 65 Shadow Priest, but I lost interest  in him a bit with what I heard of the changes in Wrath.  Their overall DPS was bumped, but some of their uniqueness was gone.  My next highest alt is my Enhancement Shammy, who sits at 49.  I LOVED him in his 30s, but started to grow tired of him as I got higher.  I couldn’t invest in the uber weapons to keep him killing fast with no downtime, and found that I spent a LOT of time on my behind.  So he was out. 

It was down to my 43 combat swords Rogue, my very first WoW character, and a 42 arms Warrior.  I loved how fast the Rogue could take things down, but there was one thing that always bugged me:  all those dang misses when dual wielding.  Yes, I know they still kill darn fast, and the misses will slowly go away when I get +hit gear in the outlands, but I just couldn’t handle seeing "Miss Miss Miss" in my scrolling combat text. 

Besides, I’ve ALWAYS wanted a high level warrior, and here is why:

• Plate Envy – Man, I see some of those numbers and drool.  After spending most of my time with a leather/cloth healer, that plate armor with its huge numbers looks awesome.  I also like the way a fully decked out warrior looks.
• Big, Nasty Weapon Envy – You can see the massive Axe in the screenshot above.  That’s what I’m talking about.  I like the idea of having a weapon I actually USE instead of just carry around for show (think druid, hunter).
• Tank Envy – I’ve always wanted to REALLY try my hand at tanking.  I’ve done it a bit with my Druid, but frankly I’m not into the whole respec thing.  I know it’s cake for you guys that run dailies every day, but for me that’s just too much cash to sling around.  I prefer to pick a spec and stick with it.  And when I think tank, I think Warrior.

And that’s how I’ve found myself doing nothing but leveling my warrior.  He’s up to 58 now, and I hope I can get him to at least 68 before Wrath hits.  I think I should be able to do it, thanks in large part to Jame’s Leveling Guide (if you’re leveling an alt, there is NO BETTER WAY than Jame’s guide).  The exp curve change from 3.0should help as well.  The idea is to get him high enough to join the "Who Will PTD Level First" competition for Wrath.  I figure I’ll throw up another post soon with my leveling spec, which is presently 43/5/0, and what I like about it.  For now, I think I’ve droned on long enough.   Thanks for reading, and don’t be surprised to hear a lot about Warriors in the near future!

I’ll be honest, I’m still wrestling with how to handle the new firewalled-at-work nature of the blog.  It was fiendishly convenient to write posts on my lunch break, but that is no more, unless I can figure out some work around that doesn’t involve spending a few hundred bucks on an iPhone.

So, what in the heck have I been up to?  Well, honestly I’m pretty sure I’ve been up to the same crap everyone else has been up to.

Enjoying the living hell out of the patch.  The fanboy in me loves Blizzard, and would marry it if it weren’t for Mrs. PTD.  They’ve just plain got their crap together.  Sure, there have been a good helping of server issues to go ’round, but that’s to be expected with such a big patch.  Luckily, I reside on one of the more stable realms, and have not had any real problems logging in whenever I want.

Well, except for those damn QUEUES, anyway.   (Is that the hardest word to spell in the English language, or is it just me?)

The funny thing is I haven’t been spending a lot of time with either of my 70s.  I did run SSC in guild the other night, and we wiped the floor with the first four bosses.  I can confirm that the nerf is in place.  That HP nerf along with our buffed talent trees made SSC MUCH more relaxing than it used to be.

Other than that, I have spent a small amount of time on my druid in search of a rare, Purple Chimera.  You may have heard of him, his name is Nuramoc.  I still haven’t even seen him, much less tamed him.  I’ve probably logged a good 6 hours in Netherstorm so far in fruitless searching.  I log on to the hunter, check all the known spawn points, log off.  Rinse and repeat.

You see, I’m a sucker for a PRETTY pet, especially if it happens to be rare.  I have no interest in a Corehound, but that pretty purple Chimera has my attention.  Heck, I’ve spent a LOT of time on my hunter camping spawns for rare pets.  It started with Humar the Pridelord.  I HAD to have that pretty black cat.  I also spent a LOT of time looking for and taming both Spiteflayer and Deathmaw.  I guess I’m a glutton for punishment.

Literally all my hunter has done is search for that pet.  Luckily, he’s a miner and engineer to boot, so I’ve collected 11 Primal Mana and about 50 each of Fel Iron and Adamantite.  Not bad!

Anyhow, OTHER than that, I’ve been working on my baby warrior.  I’ve ALWAYS wanted to have a 70 warrior.  I like the idea of a big, bad tank with the biggest, baddest weapons and that plate armor with ungodly AC.  I just never could get him past the low 40s hump.

I started on him again in earnest just before the patch.  He was level 42 then, and he’s now sitting just shy of 55.  I got him a nice blue 2 hander, and it’s been cake ever since.  It’s nice to play a character that can actually TAKE a few hits for once.  I particularly enjoy seeing how many mobs I can group up and take down solo.  The changes to Thunderclap help that quite a bit, as do the changes to retaliation. 

Retaliation was always my second favorite warrior skill.  I love mowing down groups of mobs with it.  My favorite warrior skill?  Overpower.  And now there is that nice new talent that makes Overpower sometimes proc when rend does damage.  It makes for pure huge crit sweetness!

He also got himself an entire levels worth of exp just through trick or treating.    Not bad!  I am also now forgoing stats for looks as I level with his shiny Hallowed Helm he got from a treat bad the other day.  Thus far I have seen every treat bucket in both Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms.  I’m presently wondering whether I should get a port to Shatt and see how many I could get in the Outlands!  I have no REAL goal to get the title, but I sure wouldn’t turn it down.

Anyhow, that’s what I’ve been up to.  To sum it up, I’ve been up to having a hell of a lot of fun in game.  How about you?

I don’t know about the rest of you, but since the patch I’ve been literally obsessed with the new achievement system.  I’ve been running all over Azeroth with my warrior alt (now 52) and trying to complete as many of them as I can.  Which, for a 52, isn’t all that many.  I suppose I could be doing this with my Druid or Hunter, who have the ability to clear all the BC and before achievements, at least.  With the Warrior, I can only do so many.  I suppose part of the fun doing it with an alt is that I’m gaining actual experience while I do them.

This brings me to my point about achievements.  Why am I doing them anyway?  What do I get out of them?

If you really look at it, there are very few quantifiable rewards for achievements.  The more difficult to complete achievements give titles a lot of the time.  There are also the nebulous achievement points, but I have no idea what you can use those points for anyway.

So what’s the deal?  Why do I bother? 

Is it for the pop-up on the screen when I successfully complete an achievement, along with the message in guild chat?

Is it for the fact that something that was once "grayed out" on my achievement panel is now colored in?

I suppose that the answer is really none of those, though they do help at least a little.  I think the real answer has to do with the completionist in me.  This hearkens back to my days playing Mario games.  If you remember Mario 64, that was one of the first games that really CATERED to that completionist tendency.  Sure, you could beat the game with a fairly low percentage of the 120 available stars, but who did that?  I spent a LONG time after beating it scouring every nook and cranny for the deviously hidden "secret" stars to get all 120.

I suppose I wanted to feel like I had really "beaten" the game, and wasn’t satisfied with just taking down Bowser.  It’s funny, too, that in the end the reward for getting all 120 stars was absolutely and completely underwhelming. 

So are achievements a way for people to feel like they "beat" WoW?  Do we now have a way to say we "beat" the classic and BC content before Wrath hits?  Even if you do manage to unlock ALL of the pre-Wrath achievements, what exactly will you get for it beyond the satisfaction of having done so?

In the end, though, if you look at all the different things you can achieve in the game, be they loot, boss kills, or how many vanity pets you own, none of them mean all that much.  Even the shiniest Warglaive of Azzinoth will soon be deemed unworthy of an equipment slot, and I’m sure the day will come that you will vendor your Kara or T5 or T6 gear.  Achievements, though, will be here to stay.

I’ve been in the beta for awhile now, but the fact is I’ve paid no attention whatsoever to anything resto.

I know, I’ve been a bad Tree.

You see, I just wanted to take a gander at the new CONTENT, not the class changes.  I sure as heckfire wasn’t going to take a look at it all weak and leafy.  I went Boomkin in beta to, well, make the mobs go boom. 

I hadn’t even LOOKED at the resto tree until last night. 

So I logged on around 11 pm last night (with my 48 warrior I’ve been working on) to see how my UI looked and get things set up.  Of course, my UI was a bit on the borked side.  So I went to WoW Interface to download any new and updated Addons I needed.  (WoW Interface had a very low bandwidth addons page set up, good idea!)  I also decided to do a bit of spring cleaning, and cleared out the bulk of my Addons folder.  Just too much junk in there.

So here I am wrestling with a new bar mod and working on getting things set up when I get a tell asking if I wanted to heal Heroic Blood Furnace.

Hmm.  Tempting.  I haven’t even LOGGED into my druid yet, I have no idea what talents I’m going to take, and surely his UI is borked, too.

"Sure," I say. 

So I jump over and spec to this.  My method?  I just go down the frigging tree and go "yes, yes, yes, no, no, yes" until I’ve spent 55 points in resto.  Some good looking stuff in there that I had to at least try.  Living Seed?  Check.  Imp Tree of Life?  Check.  Gift of the Earthmother?  Check.  And, of course, Wild Growth.

I looked everything else over.  I had upgraded Clique already, and Grid worked as is.  I had to change my Clique settings quickly to fit in Wild Growth, but that was about it.  I got my bars in reasonably working order, got the daily, and took the summon.

Whew.  I wasn’t prepared to hit the ground running, that’s for sure.  I thought I was going to just spend a couple hours getting things set up.  Oh well.

On to heroic BF.

It went very, very well.  The group consisted a Warrior, a Boomin, a Lock, an Enhance Shammy, and myself.  I know myself and the Warrior are geared VERY well, though I’m not sure of the others we went with.  Still, we went through BF faster than I’ve ever gone though it before.  I’m not sure if we have new, "overpowered" spells and talents now or what, but we wasted that place.  Blew its doors off.  Took it out to the woodshed.  About the only hiccups were a couple times when the DPS pulled aggro from their OPness.  No biggie.  It was a lot of fun, and I look forward to more heroics to see whether that was just a fluke or what.

Here are my initial reactions to the tree changes.

• I LOVE that I can move just as fast as everyone else now.
• I LOVE that I can fricking rez people now.
• I LOVE that I actually got Soulstoned.  As a matter of fact, the one time I died I sat there with a stupid look on my face for a good 30 seconds before realizing I had the option to rez myself.  I guess I’ll have to get used to that.
• I LOVE Omen of Clarity.  Especially since it’s not a buff like it used to be, but an always on, passive talent.  It seemed to proc constantly, and I tried to use Regrowth or another, bigger heal whenever it did.
• I LOVE Wild Growth

It’s not as overpowered as it once was in the beta, but it is a VERY useful addition to my healing arsenal.   I know, 861 isn’t a huge amount.  And the fact that it takes 7 seconds to HEAL that whole amount isn’t great either.

However, it’s a HUGE boon for 5 mans at the very least.  Under normal circumstances, I often have to totally ignore damage to the DPS in tough situations.  I often have to focus 100% on the tank to keep him up in hairy spots.  With Wild Growth, I can work a group heal in WITHOUT losing focus on the tank.  It’s instant, it has a cool animation, and it works.

I’ll have to see in the future how it function in a raid environment, but because it’s a TARGETED group heal, I think it will work VERY well.  I look forward to taking this baby out into Kara or something in the future.

As far as the other stuff, I have no idea if and when living seed went off.  I wasn’t tracking stats or anything, and I had no kind of DPS meter, so I have no idea how, overall, the healing or DPS was.  I’ll try to look closely in the future.  I wasn’t really prepared for this last night. 

The only meter that mattered though, the fun meter, was very high.  Big patches like this one just always bring out the geek in me.  I love, love, love everything so far.  The graphics tweaks are noticeable, I love the new loading screens, I love the new pet/mount system, I love the achievements.  In short, I love WoW patch 3.02.

I’m a fanboy.  Sue me.