Well, so far the Midsummer Fire Festival has been a great hit this year and everyones bin havin’ fun!  Wi’ all that’s been goin’ on it’s nice tae see adventurers oot enjoyin’ themself.  If ye huvnae been oot tae try any o’ the events yet make sure ye have a go!

Like I mentioned in my last post - replayability is one of the things I particularly like to examine.  There has been much hoo-haa on the wow blogo-sphere recently about what makes you come back, what makes you stay, what makes you addicted even and I guess replayability somewhat ties into that - if nothing ever changes then why come back?

I was very glad to see Blizz had not dropped the ball on this event like I felt they somewhat had on the Lunar Festival.  Events like the fire festival seem well attended - a good proportion of my guild has done the bonfire runs - unlike collecting for Noblegarden and the Lunar Festival (which were mostly skipped, especially by those who had participated before).

The Midsummer Fire Festival is another ’step up’ in events, in my opinion.  It has greater levels of interactivity and reward than any other in-game events to date.  What makes me think this?

Lunar Festival

• Quests
• Outfits
• Consumables
• Rep

Love is in the Air

• Quests
• Outfits
• Consumables
• Special Boss Drop ([Bouqet of Red Roses])

Noblegarden

• Outfits
• Consumables

Children’s Week

• Quests
• Non-Combat Pet

Midsummer Fire Festival

• Quests
• High Level Items
• Daily Quests
• Dungeon Boss
• Non-Combat Pet
• Consumables
• Outfits
• Buffs
• ‘Fun’ Items*

Harvest Festival

• Quests
• Consumables

Brewfest

• Quests
• Daily Quests
• Non-Combat Pet
• Consumables
• Outfits
• ‘Fun’ Items*

Hallow’s End

• Quests
• High Level Items
• Non-Combat Pet
• Consumables
• Outfits
• ‘Fun’ Items*
• Repeatable (non-daily) Quests (Trick or Treating)

Winter Veil / New Years

• Quests
• Non-Combat Pet
• Consumables
• Outfits
• ‘Fun’ Items*
• Repeatable (non-daily) Quests (Revelers)
• Special Boss Drop ([Red Winter Hat], [Green Winter Hat])
• Holiday Recipes

*(Things such as the Brazier, Pony Keg or Eyesight ‘Enhancing’ Goggles)

We can see from this list that, currently, the Midsummer Fire Festival outstrips most others by quite a lot.  Winter’s Veil comes close, though, as does Hallow’s End and Brewfest which have all been added to or updated in the last year or so.

Some, such as the upcoming Brewfest, will have the new ideas from previous events added - it will be gaining a dungeon boss, for example - with some new fun items and loot.  It is obvious to see that some events have far more planning but this is not a definitive marker of success - Children’s Week, for example, offers only a couple of quests and two non-combat pets per person but seems quite popular.

Now, it’s obvious that Blizzard can’t give us something akin to the Midsummer Fire Festival every month - it’d be too much work for them and us! You need some downtime, in my opinion, to enjoy the ‘up’ time more.  Having the small holidays give those who need a little vacation from the serious side of WoW time to relax and kick about doing something silly is nice - there’s nothing much lost if you don’t do them, though, so people don’t feel the need to drop everything and do the associated events.

Replayability

In terms of replayability, though, the updated events are gaining strongly.  Children’s Week’s popularity is, in my mind, high because there is a TBC-level quest which incorporates and enhances the general TBC level things.  That and people love new non-combat pets. *ahem*

The Midsummer Fire Festival took the success that was Brewfest and added what they had also learned from the Hallow’s End event.  Combining all of their ideas from both events has made for one rather huge festival which is extensive and even a little daunting at times.  It gives new ‘phat lewt’ for those who care about it, has a fun new boss encounter, gets you jaunting around the world and maybe enjoying a little world pvp while you’re at it.  You can grab an item to enjoy with your friends and an outfit which will look spiffy in those first-kill screenshots or when you’re idling at the bank / AH.

They’re not, however, just adding replayability to the festival itself, though, and this is where I start to get gleeful.  Like the Headless Horseman event they’re pushing people back into instances that are otherwise quiet - Slave Pens is an Outlands instance but I know I hadn’t been in it for a few months at least on my rogue as I need nothing from it and no guildies have asked about running it either.  The event is deemed quite hard at the moment but I wonder if they’ll keep it next year as it’ll, then, be a fun way to boost a few alts through an event and get them some nice gear before they hit Northrend.

With the Brewfest event they’ll be adding a boss in BRD, if I remember rightly.  Now, I go visit BRD every once in a while just for some fun - stealthing about and getting enchanting patterns and the like - but I bet a lot of people haven’t been there for quite some time or even at all!

Group Items

I mentioned fun items above and I want to look a little more closely at these and why I like the idea of them.  A few of these items I deem as ‘group’ items.  That is, they are more fun if used in a social situation - namely the pony keg and the brazier of dancing flames.  Adding items which encourage interaction is a way of getting people excited over holidays - some people who were never bothered about getting themselves something will go out of their way to get an item which allows for fun in a social situation - for example, people buying braziers because it’d make a fun item for raid downtime.

Adding new group quests which do not take as long to do as, say, a whole instance or daily dungeon / heroic is also a nice touch.  Some groups are finding it hard to complete them, though, which Siha at Banana Shoulders touches on here.  This is something I really think they should look at - I feel the event is supposed to be challenging (requires tactics knowledge) but shouldn’t be overwhelming (i.e. need really good gear / particular class specs).

So, What Now?

Now, I’m not going to sit here and cry about wanting all events to have the same masses of items / quests / etc. that the newly re-done ones have - I appreciate the effort which has gone into those which have been updated and the continual renewal of older events to make them more fun to re-do year by year, alt by alt.  However, there are some small suggestions I’d make for the events which have not been re-done - with an eye to the fact that these will likely be staying as small events (though it would be nice to get a boost around April/May when there’s little else happening and the weather can be quite miserable!)

• New Items - This one is simple.  Add eggs in Outlands for Noblegarden, for example, with different things in them - a new elegant type of dress and a new pant-suit for Love is in the Air which doesn’t look like pyjamas for example.  Perhaps patterns for them? Matching hat / shoes / belt?  I’m not much into making outfits for my characters but I know some people who are.  The Lunar Festival dresses / suits are some of my favourite for bank alts - perhaps new colours or cloaks to match?  Adding more random drops to current bosses (like the hats and roses) would also be fun.
• New Quests - I really do love the ‘honouring’ quests from the Harvest and Lunar festivals but it would be nice if they refreshed these - perhaps incorporating themes from the expansion - Honoring the  Shattered Sun memorial, for instance.
• Adding Outlands (and eventually Northrend) - A lot of the events happen only in the ‘Old World’  - it would be nice to see it spread through Outlands.  Where people go, so do their customs!  This has been done, a little, but it would be nice to see it continue so that, when Northrend is out and we’re bored of all the cool colours, we can come back and get some warmth in Outlands.

Ok, so I’m not terribly imaginitive but even simple small additions like this would, in my eyes, add to replayability.  I want more ways to play, more fun things to collect, more ways to interact with friends old and new.  I’ve actually met quite a few people this week due to running around doing the Fire Festival quests through either explaining to them how to do certain aspects or, in one instance, being helped through a capital city to get my flame (A big thanks to the warlock who ran ahead of me to aggro the guards in Thunder Bluff to and from the flame! Hehehe). This is the sort of stuff that I love looking at and one of the reasons I enjoy playing WoW - they’re not just throwing up superficial festivity items around the place but they go quite some way to integrate it into the world and make it appeal across all levels.

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Ah, time fer the Fire Festival!  Lookin’ forward tae celebratin’ it this year as always.  But, ken, ah wis in oan the plans and ah wrote aboot them a while back.  Maybe go take a gander?

When the Midsummer Fire Festival was on the PTR I did a quick write up about the events.  I haven’t checked yet if they’re still identical but maybe my post will still have some relevance - you can find it here.  I should get a chance to check it out later this evening and will update with any changes I find.  Last tiny spam post for the moment, I promise.

Edit:  Ok, I was going to do an update but now I’ma be lazy and point you to the awesome writeup by one of my favourote bloggers.  Check out this guide over at A Dwarf Priest for all your festival needs!

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I started out writing this post as an observation on how players were interacting after 2.4, how the level of co-operation was going up a little and, hopefully, would continue to do so. Whilst I was thinking on it, though, I realised it had more than just the effects I had originally fixated on - thus I have decided to document at least a few of the changes I think 2.4 has had whether they are possibly fleeting or long lasting.

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Haud’ on tight, we’re goin fer a ride on the back o’ a dragon. This is the life, wheee!

I got my Netherdrake a week or two back but never really got around to mentioning it (it’s my second character to get one so I guess it’s not quite as exciting). Anyways, I have a habit of taking pictures when I find myself randomly in an area with nice lighting or somesuch and the above I took one morning whilst doing my dailies. I liked the screenie so much I made a very simple desktop (click on the pic for that). Nothing amazing as I really wanted a plain background which was softer than my old one. Shame that I couldn’t zoom out further to catch the tail…

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So, as thon lassie pointed oot - the Lunar Festival ain’t all aboot dancin’ and getting yersel’ drunk. It’s aboot makin’ sure yer ancestors ken ye still remember them!

Or, in other words, rep grind!

The minute I knew there was a big cat mount in WoW I wanted it. Call me a boring sheep, whatever, I like big cats and I was for having one. I looked up how to get Darnassus rep at the time and decided the PvP route wasn’t likely (this was before the honour system changes) since I didnt pvp very much and sucked at it besides. I set out to do all of the quests I could that gave Darnassus rep but I’d gotten past the level where diminishing returns meant no rep for low level quests (again, this has since changed). I left WoW for a bit without, sadly, having ever reached that particular goal.

When I came back I had gained a bit more of an interest in PvP and quickly got myself one of the kitties-for-honour (welfare kitty?) - however I don’t like those nearly as much as the Darnassus ones (and, hey, it’s a matter of principle for me to finish now that I’ve started!). With the new diminishing returns meaning I could still get honour for the really low level quests I went back and did all of the starting ones; I put all of the runecloth I got from levelling through Hellfire / Zangarmarsh into Darnassus rep too and any morrowgrain I could make.

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I have to admit, I had never come across the term ‘altitis’ until I discovered the wow blogosphere but I’ve adopted it completely as it so well described my own habit concerning alts. I have far too many and it’s hard to stop making more like some sort of weird complusive disorder. My other half, on finding out some of my cousins also played WoW commented “Oh he probably has an alt on your server, he has one on every server!” Now, as I pointed out at the time, this was a bit of an exaggeration - I have alts spread across a few servers, yes, but mostly level 1 characters made to speak to friends whom I met after rolling my mains. I wondered to myself why I kept rolling new characters and here are the things I came up with: Read more

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Any excuse fer a party’s got tae be guid, right? But when ye add fancy new clothes, festival buns and a big monster tae kill that just makes it even more brilliant! Lunar festival’s a great time tae have fun wi’ yer friends but aw mine seem tae be a bit less in the partyin’ mood this year…

My first lunar festival happened to coincide with rolling Mharai. I’d missed it on Aurik due to playing during summer (when I didn’t have Uni work to complete) and I wanted in on it wholesale whilst I had the chance. Being on an RP realm meant that the outfit probably wouldn’t just lie gathering dust in the bank all year, too! Despite being level 15 I hauled my Tauren rear around the world (with help from a rather kind Paladin) and got myself some coins, bought a dress and a suit and paraded around quite happily in them whilst eating festival buns, having great fun as I did.

This year, though, I have Aurik, Avarix and Dryn. None of them need the professions items (rocket launchers, fireworks and festival suits / dress) and, being on a PvE server, they aren’t likely to see much use of any festival gear I get them. It kinda takes the fun out of the festival if you’ve ‘done it all before’ when there’s nothing much new to get.

Now you might say “Wheesht you, you’re getting something for nothing!” but I point here to the fact that Blizzard has updated most of the other yearly events so far.

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