I’m not raiding…

Ok, maybe it’s not that simple but that’s a good start.  Raiding brought me some of the best times in game – it brought me encounters and teamwork and an ‘omg we finally beat it’ but it’s also brought me some of the worst – elitist attitudes, feeling like I have to stick to one main character all the time, having to get x or y buff for the raid, having to do stuff when I’m not in the mood and, of course, the stress over herding 25 cats around a raid instance.  I also dislike the tiny, incremental progress you get once you’re at the higher tiers of raiding – I can understand why they wouldn’t want you to upgrade by a tonne between tiers but I always loved the feeling of gear up, striving towards a goal of x mp5 or SP, etc. rather than worrying about 1% haste vs. 1% crit.  I’ve never been a hardcore raider at heart – I’ve always loved the encounters and the loot, too, if we’re being honest; but when you’ve seen an encounter 30 times it just gets boring.

I miss playing at that level, to be sure – I miss MH, BT and Sunwell where I actually felt, sometimes, like my shaman was literally gasping with effort at outputting as much healing as possible.  Even Ulduar, I miss, with it’s kooky fights and beautiful surroundings.  But, in the end, I don’t really miss raiding…

I’m levelling…

In fact, I’m levelling three or four characters as well as their professions.  It feels great.  What do I fancy playing today?  Druid? Cool, lets go blow through some rhinos in a storm of swiping; Paladork?  He needs to level his enchanting, off to get some mats! and so forth.  I think being in a raiding guild, with all the wonderfulness that it brought, made it too easy on me alts wise – there was always a guild bank full of random blues or levelling mats or the like, always someone to ask about specs, rotations etc. and always the goal of ‘get to 80 already’.

I’m dilly-dallying through the game again, enjoying quests I’ve not visited in a while (yay horde quests) and generally taking things slowly.  It’s a shame Spore is such a quiet server now, so instancing is not so easy, but I’m having fun levelling in a way I’ve not had for a long time.

I’m playing with RL™ friends…

Most of my real-life friends who play are way more casual – playing less or levelling slowly, and they give me a perspective that I often forget.  They’re brave in ways I never used to be – one of them, in particular, uses his own specs – never, as far as I know, looking up what’s ‘best’ whilst levelling – he picks what he uses for levelling carefully and with thought and enjoys the process of it.  It’s something I’ve always been ‘afraid’ to do, even whilst levelling.

We’re also able to do silly stuff like 3-manning instances and almost managed to three-man the Ring of Blood at level 66 – only beaten by the last boss after his self-resurrection!  It’s more fun when you do it with friends; you know each others thoughts better and we can chat about it before our weekly DnD game as well as organising fun stuff around tight schedules.  It’s also doubly fun for me as neither of them have been to Northrend yet – I’ll be able to tag along and see their reactions to the cool new stuff which often invigorates how I feel about things which seem, in some ways, ‘old’ to me.

I’m Horde…

To me the Horde has always been home – much as I love Dwarves and Space Squid, I cannot help hankering after the rugged, tribalistic Orc, Troll and Tauren architecture, the glimmering but sad spires of the blood elves and the dark, messy hovels of the forsaken.  There’s something about the ‘Barrens’ music which tugs at me, something about Orgrimmar at night which makes it feel like ‘home’.  Maybe it’s the crickets…

Also, as Pike said:

When I think of her, I don’t think of her as a character in WoW. I think of her as this living, breathing individual. She is of course, not real, but it sure feels that way sometimes.

(you can see how long it takes me to write posts by seeing what I link to /sigh!)

I can’t see my characters as generic, I enjoy playing them and I’ve gained a bond with them.  Though this means I miss my alliance ones, my horde ones have always been there wanting some love, too.  Mharai was my first max level character and, as such, has always held a certain something for me.  I might do a post to ‘introduce’  my hordies, so you’ll know who I’m talking to (especially since at least one of them shares a name with an alliance toon… for now).

I’m on an RP realm…(?)

Sporeggar is barely an RP realm any more (/sadface) but it’s enough of one that if you emote and talk in-character you don’t get too many odd stares.  You can also report people if they bug you about it.  The ‘idea’ of an RP realm appeals to me and RPPVP just makes sense in terms of an ‘always on’ war.  I don’t go around killing people, I’m a carebear, but I believe in the right to do so out-with ’safe’ areas.

Achievements…

Others may not think much of achievements -  they’re points for the sake of points… but it’s not the number of points I care about.  Loremaster is an achievement I always meant to get around to doing but never did.  A lack of love for dps/grinding on my shaman put me off – I can run around as a cat or bear for hours (how I got Ava to 80 I’ll never know…) Also, raiding took up a lot of my online time, and when not raiding, the peripherals of raiding (dailies, or fishing etc.) and so doing more quests just seemed like a chore, not fun.

Some which I’m not doing yet, but will do, such as Guardian of Cenarius, just didn’t seem right for my shaman – and since I was keeping most of my achievements to one character that meant a definite lack of willpower.  Mharai, on the other hand, will be going for that title as her next goal after Loremaster as it suits her and when it feels right, it’s more fun (for me, anyway).

Anyway…

This is a sort of ‘where I’m at’ post.  I know most of you will skip over it, and that’s fine – I use this blog partially as a journal so I don’t forget these thoughts and I can store good memories for when I need ‘em.  For those who have gone through it, you’ll know where my perspective is coming from in future posts!  Also, perhaps, it can help a little with those others who’re sitting and feeling in a bit of a rut at the moment - sometimes you need to step back and re-evaluate why you’re playing the game and what you actually enjoy.

Replayability has always been something which interested me, which drove me to look more critically at, particularly, the Holiday events.  It seemed, when I first started looking at them, that there was no reason to re-do them after the first time.  I did some of them multiple times because I enjoyed them but there was no drive to re-do them after the first couple of times unless they gave rep or XP and that meant sometimes you were the only, lonely person trying to save a Reindeer or suchlike.

Then along came achievements.  Huzzah! More people are doing the events, the whole server is aware that something is going on and the usual humdrum rhythms have been interrupted by ‘LFG HH!’ etc.  “But wait!” you cry, “it doesn’t count, they’re only doing it for shiny achievement points and epic lewts!”.  So what?  If it gets people out into the world, sampling the content made for them and trying something they otherwise might not then I’m for it.  Of course, it brings the usual drama when phat lewts are involved but, on the whole, more people are taking part in holiday events.  Wonderful.  There’s nothing more fun than doing silly things with friends (again).

Reruns?

So, right, more people are doing it, but where does replayability come into that?  Well, a good number of people have now ‘finished’ the ‘Long Strange Trip’ achievement and… aren’t bothering any more – unless they have an alt who wants epics, or a shot at a rare mount / pet.  Despite the fact that buckets were added to Northrend there was no achievement added for collecting them.  I was a little sad at this (if, partly, because it meant I had to check places which didn’t have buckets!) but also because I wonder if that’s going to be ‘it’ for the current holiday achievements.  Now, I’ve heard they have said they won’t add any more towards the Proto-Drake, which is all fine and sensible to me… but is there any reason to not add more frivolous achievements to the Holidays, just to keep people interested that bit longer?  Something for those to do who’ve ‘done it all before’ or to point people in the direction of the newly added content which is otherwise not necessarily noticeable (like the buckets)?  Now that we’re looking at an expansion being out by this time next year, there’s no reason for them to add any of the things they put into Northrend into the achievement system.  It’d be old already.

Is that ‘it‘ for holiday achievements?  Shall people begin to ignore any that they’ve done already?  I hope not.  Certainly a fair number of alts are seeing the content – but when achievements are account wide will that still happen? Now, I’m not totally blind, I don’t think there’s only doom and gloom and noone is doing achievements – there are still a fair number doing them this year but I’m wondering about next year.  Blizzard has put in place a nicely updatable system – they only need to upscale the level of the holiday boss and add the basic badge vendor rings / trinkets / cloaks etc. and whoop, updated event – that’s cool, that’s sensible – but I’d like to see one or two new holiday achievements per year – maybe an updated Long Strange Trip with some sort of silly title or somesuch.

Like the continued adding of pet achievements – something more to work on for those of us who love holidays as much as achievements!

How-and-ever…

The changes made to the holiday’s in wow within the last two-three years have been phenomenal, but some others could still use some work.  Whilst I’d love to see some holidays made bigger – speak like a pirate day or day of the dead celebrations – I can understand why you also would not want to pack too much in: sometimes when you’re raiding etc. holidays can feel like a bit of a burden (especially if they come with a boatload of achievements and you’re a completionist).  However, there are some big gaps in the holiday year where it’d be nice to have small events or added extras.

What else?

I know this will seem silly to most but it’d be nice if the ‘events’ dropped some form of neutral currency.  This past week I’ve seen a horrendous number of rings laying on the ground; the trinkets at Brewfest less so but once you’re on your 5th caster/ healer trinket in a group with three plate dps… It would be nice if, for instance, they dropped a BoA reputation commendation or a ‘current dailies’ badge i.e. Champion’s Seals – even if only one per day given when you hand in the quest.  This not only gives people an extra reason to go if their mains have ‘done it all last year’ or outgear the rewards, it also gives incentive to rerun it if you’ve already got ‘epic mount / pet’ and means that if the rewards aren’t diverse enough such as in the case of 5 of the same item, that people still get something for heading along there.

I know, I know ‘have my cake and eat it too’ but there you are.

Grouping

Also, for goodness sake Blizzard, make it easier to group for these things – trade spam goes up 100% at the start of these events as there is no ’seasonal’ setting for the LFG tool – I can only hope something in the new LFG tool will fix this, otherwise it’s an irritating side-effect of the current system.   I don’t mind running to Slave Pens, Blackrock or Scarlet Monastery, but trying to organise a group when everyone is looking in different places (general city, general tirisfal, trade and sometimes even in the LFG channel for this event).

Oh, and I’ve not even seen the Horseman’s mount drop once so far. Hmph.

Well, wid ye look at that!  It’s almost Brewfest time again – Brilliant! Time tae get my mug and git ready fer some heavy boozin’ an’ eatin’!

My thoughts on last years update of Brewfest can be found here. Just a run-down of the achievements, as I can’t say much for certain about the other parts of the event yet!

Achievements

• Meta: Brewmaster(A), Brewmaster (H)

• Strange Brew (A), Strange Brew (H)
• Brew of the Month
• Direbrewfest
• Disturbing the Peace
• Does your Wolpertinger Linger?
• The Brewfest Diet
• Drunken Stupor
• Down With the Dark Iron
• Have Keg, Will Travel

• Brew of the Year

Quick-Reference Tips

Strange Brew / The Brewfest Diet – There are three sets of vendors in each Brewfest camp, each of whom will procure for you their own brands of liquor!  Make sure to visit them all, and have a jolly good time getting sloshed.  Similarly, various vendors in the encampment sell the foods needed for the Brewfest Diet – make sure you have plenty of bag-room when you head there!

Brew of the Month – The token to join this comes from the token redeemer – just grab one and then use the item and enjoy a year-round selection of drunken fun from your mailbox.

Direbrewfest – Apparently Coren Direbrew is being updated to level 80 with appropriate rewards.  I haven’t been able to find any more information on this, I’m afraid.  When you enter BRD, look to your right hand side – there should be some dwarves who you should kill and then use the tunnelling machine.  Last year people didn’t have to complete the small quest chain that’s available as a breadcrumb to him before going to BRD but it’s worth double checking.

Disturbing the Peace – This involves getting three pieces of Brewfest Regalia and doing a simple /dance in Dalaran.

Does your Wolpertinger Linger – These darling, odd little pets can be bought from Brewfest NPCs.  Wowhead lists them as being sold by Ray’ma(H), and Larkin Thunderbrew(A) in the Valley of Spirits near the portal and in Ironforge in the Inn near the entrance respectively.  Oddly, I was sure I bought mine from a vendor in the Brewfest camp last year so it might be worth checking those before making the trip into the cities!

Drunken Stupor -This is as simple as getting drunk and doing what you did to get Going Down.  For those who’ve never done that achievement or have a bad memory – using levitation effects (levitate, slowfall, parachute) or landing in water will not work, but damage reduction abilities (ice block, divine shield, passive rogue / kitty) will.

Down With the Dark Iron – Around every half-hour a whole pile of dark iron dwarves spawn in the brewfest camp – you can grab a brew from one of the tables (the type you’d normally drink), and throw it at a Dark Iron Dwarf to incapacitate them.  When you throw your mug, one of the npcs around the edge of the camp will throw another to you to use – so you can bring it to a key and spam away merrily.  You want to do this, as if they are defeated they will leave a cogwheel behind them which will give you the quest required for this achievement.

Brew of the year is not requires for the Brewmaster meta achievement – so no worries if you didn’t pick this up last year.  A big congratulations to all those who’ll be completing What a Long, Strange Trip it’s Been – my break means I missed the Fire Festival so no shiny for me, but I expect to see a whole lot of people on bright, new pink proto-drakes!

_{(ps – no your eyes aren’t deceiving you, this is a /hug post.  I’m tentatively playing WoW very casually again and may be just as tentatively updating the blog again!  For more frequent updates, follow me on twitter @aurik)}

Children’s week follows hotly on the heels of Noblegarden this year – a double-whammy of eventful goodness.  Children’s week has fewer achievements than most holidays, but it has trickier ones and a whole pile of quests to do and some nice rewards for pet collectors.

Achievements

For The Children

• Home Alone
• Daily Chores
• School of Hard Knocks
• Bad Example
• Aw, Isn’t It Cute?
• Hail to the King, Baby

Not needed for the meta, but an available achievement:

• Veteran Nanny

As of last night, Home Alone was bugged and resetting all the time – I would expect that we’ll see a patch or fix for this soon if it’s not already been done since I went to sleep!

Bad Example requires several cooking-only items alongside a pile of vendor-bought treats so I whipped up a quick list of where each comes from.

Stormwind / Orgrimmar

Usually this ice cream is buyable from Shimmering Flats, but for the duration of the holiday there are vendors in Stormwind and Orgrimmar where you can purchase some ice cream!  You’ll also need this ice cream for giving to your old-world orphan so don’t throw any spare away! (it sells in stacks of five, like most of this food does)

• [Tigule and Foror's Strawberry Ice Cream]

Dalaran Vendor

Aimee, the high elf vendor near the northern bank in Dalaran sells these treats – the lovely cake slice comes from the Lovely Cake she sells – you get 5 pieces per cake you buy so you could share with a friend of take them all and send them to alts.

• [Lovely Cake Slice]
• [Red Velvelt Cupcake]
• [Dalaran Donut]
• [Dalaran Brownie]

Crafted

You’ll either need to craft these, get a guildie to make them, or buy them off of the auction house.  Personally I recommend not going to the auction house as, unless you’re lucky, delicious chocolate cakes will cost a fortune.  Happily for me, someone was selling the cupcakes for 1g / cake.  Extortionate, really, except for the fact others were selling northern eggs – which are required to make them -  for about 15g / 1.  A great place to farm small eggs for the chocolate cake recipe is just outside of Auberdine – i’m not sure if there’s a closer place for the horde (see below) but the moonkins here have a 90+% drop rate and are packed relatively close.

• [Delicious Chocolate Cake]
• [Tasty Cupcake]

Indigo:  Second, a little hint about the small egg farming: belf starter zone is full of dragonhawks with a 100% droprate, and about 50% chance that they actually drop 2.

Quests

Remember: All of the achievements require you to have an orphan out, do not complete the ‘Back to the Orphanage’ or ‘Warden of the <Faction>’ quests until you’re done with achievements as you will then not be able to take out your orphan any more!

Sephrenia:  You can give your orphans back to get your pet rewards. If you talk to one of the matrons again she will give you a new orphan to care for during the rest of the week. I tested it in SW, so is not just a rumour :D

Stormwind / Orgrimmar Quests

Stormwind Orphan // Orgrimmar Orphan

• A Warden of the Alliance // A Warden of the Horde
• Spooky Lighthouse // Gateway to the Frontier
• The Stonewrought Dam // Down at the Docks
• The Bough of the Eternals // Lordaeron Throne Room

Each of these is a visit to somewhere reasonably close to each faction’s main cities – having extra hearth cooldowns here is handy and the new 30-min cooldown will probably help a lot but if you don’t have this luxury then I reccomend:

Alliance: Start in Ironforge – > Fly to Thelsamar – Ride to Stonewrought Dam -> Fly to Westfall – Ride out to the Lighthouse -> Fly to Stormwind – Boat to Thelsamar -> Fly to Darnassus.  Don’t forget to pick up some ice cream for your orphan whilst you’re in Stormwind!

Horde: Start in Orgrimmar -> Fly to Ratchet- Ride down to the Docks -> Fly to Crossroads or Orgrimmar – Ride to the Mor’shan Rampart -> Ride back to Orgrimmar – take the Zeppelin to Undercity – Ride into the throne room. Don’t forget to pick up some ice cream for your orphan whilst you’re in Orgrimmar!

I suggest you save your hearthstone for once these are done, as you’ll get more quests which require zipping about the world:

• You Scream, I Scream… // You Scream, I Scream…
• Jaina’s Autograph // Cairne’s Hoofprint
• A Warden of the Alliance // A Warden of the Horde

If you got your ice cream on the way past Orgrimmar and Stormwind, the first should be easy.  For Jaina’s Autograph you can portal to Ironforge -> fly to Menethil and take the boat or, if you want to be lazy, portal to Gadgetzan (Caverns of Time) and fly there.  The final part requires you to return your orphan back to the capital city you got them in.

Shattrath Quests

Alliance Orphan // Horde Orphan

• A Trip to the Dark Portal // A Trip to the Dark Portal
• Auchindon and the Ring of Observation // Visit the Throne of the Elements
• Time to Visit the Caverns // Time to Visit the Caverns
• Jheel is at Aeris Landing! // Hch’uu and the Mushroom People
• Time to Visit the Caverns // Time to Visit the Caverns

These are all in Outlands – if you have an epic flyer, use that, if not, flightpaths are your friends.  It’ll take a little while as Outlands is pretty big but all of them are relatively easy.  For the Alliance, visiting the Ring of Observation, you need to take your orphan right up to the meeting stone to get credit.

• The Seat of the Naaru // Now, When I grow Up…
• Call on the Farseer

I’m not sure what they’ve done with the horde side quest since they took Mu’ru away – I know it used to have a follow up to the ‘visiting Silvermoon’ section, too, but I can’t find any information on that and I haven’t been on my horde character for a while now.  Any info from someone whose done it would be appreciated!  Once this is all done…

• Back to the Orphanage // Back to the Orphanage

Most of these are easy enough to fly around and, hopefully, by the time you get to ‘Time to Visit the Caverns’ your hearth will be off cooldown.  Remember you can portal directly to the Caverns of Time from Dalaran or you can go from Shattrath if you’ve got revered reputation with the Keepers of Time.

PvP

Child Soldiers…

Once again there’s some pvp in the event’s achievements.  I didn’t mind the other ones too much but the ones for children’s week are particularly obnoxious. I can only offer what I was trying for those who cannot get premades:

• AB: Either be lucky and get to the farm / stables first or wait until a flag is capped and you see all the horde run off.  If you’re lucky you might get a hordie / alli to ‘trade’ captures with you.
• WSG: This was the most painful for me – I was eventually ’saved’ from my plight of fighting 6 people for the return by a friendly tauren (Achuk?) who ran into our flag room, took the flag and dutifully waited to be killed.  I tried to return the favour but some people seemed intent on winning or something silly like that…  If you want to help the other faction you can run into their room, spam a /wait macro, grab the flag and then click the buff to remove it and drop the flag.  If they aren’t silly you can do this a few times for everyone to get their achievements.
• EOTS: Stand in the middle and ignore the pained cries from your teammates who’re not doing the achievements.  Thunderstorm is lovely here by the way.  Spell reflect is not! Hehe.
• AV: Either run down the bottom and hope you’re fast enough and get to a tower before someone else or stay up the top end and re-cap horde towers once they take them.  Otherwise, hope you get a friendly hordie who is kind enough to take the flag not one, but four or five times to let you all have a shot at taking the flag.  Roben, I salute you!

I think that Blizzard picked the wrong kind of things  for this achievement – they encourage bad play and I get the feeling that it will only frustrate pvpers to have a bunch of pve nubs come in and ruin their games just to get achievements done.  I know there are some pvpers who pve and vice versa but I would guess by what I seen last night that the pve-ers who care about achievements outnumber those who care about winning games…

On the up-side, as you may be able to see from my blog’s sidebar I  earned a few pvp-based achievements last night from these:

• Not In My House
• Storm Capper

Rewards

Title

For all of the achievements complete you get the title Matron or Patron.  It’s not a title I’ll be using but I guess it’s kind of cute and will probably be nice for some people on RP servers or for those who are guild Mums.

Reputation

Doing all of the holiday quests nets a tidy little packet of reputation for your faction’s cities.  If you’re not already exalted or can’t be bothered doing the argent dailies for rep, then make sure to do these quests and boost your rep!

Pets

The yearly pet reward for Children’s Week will be a welcome boost to many people’s collections – especially those like me who’re sitting so very close to 75 pets (i’ve had no luck with baby dragons and crocs nor do I have the MgT pet on Ava – chainging mains sucks sometimes, hehe).

From the Stormwind // Orgrimmar orphans:

• [Piglet's Collar]
• [Turtle Box]
• [Rat Cage]

From the Shattrath orphans:

• [Egbert's Egg]
  
• [Elekk Training Collar]
• [Sleepy Willy]

You could always take the [Curmudgeon's Payoff], of course, but 5 gold really is hardly worth it these days unless you’re really anti-pets.

As a small aside, if you have a warcraftpets account, remember to update it! (though the poor site is a little sickly at the moment).

Orphans

I still can’t get past hoping that they’ll add orphans for each faction.  It’d be nice for my druid to take a night elf child around and teach them about Darnassus and its alliance with the other nations, or a Tauren child for my horde druid, to show them why we must ally with questionable types!  I guess I just feel it’s a little odd than only four factions seem to have any children running about.

Replayability

This is something I like to look at with all events – is it worthwhile to do again, has it been updated?  Children’s week was updated last year and I had hoped they would add another set of quests this year for Dalaran (or the Oracles / Frenzyhearts).  With Noblegarden so close, though, and such a big content patch, too, I can’t blame them but I do rather hope they add something new next year.

Children’s week is rather odd in the fact that year-to-year the same rewards are available but you’re limited to two of six – or more realistically, you’re limited to two sets of one out of three.  This means that to get the full compliment of ‘items’ you have to re-do it each year.  I do like this to some extent – though, as a character who has changed mains twice now, it can be a little frustrating.  It does keep the interest in the holiday alive, though, and Children’s Week was one of the few events I always seen people participating in pre-achievements and pre-epic rewards.

Noblegarden, the most underrated of holidays and the only one I’ve never managed to participate in! I am looking forward to experiencing the newly extended event but the fact I’ve not done it myself (and that few people have via the ptr as its testing phase was short there) will mean that some information may not be as entirely accurate as I’d like it to be.

Achievements

Meta:

• Noble Gardener (A) // Noble Gardener (H)

Sub-achievements:

• I Found One!
• Chocoholic
• Hard Boiled
• Spring Fling (A) // Spring Fling (H)
• Noblegarden (A) // Noblegarden (H)
• Shake your Bunny-Maker
• Desert Rose
• Blushing Bride

Two other achievements directly associated with the event, but not required to get the meta achievement for Noblegarden are:

• Dressed for the Occasion
• Sunday’s Finest

The achievement Chocolate Lover is also associated with this holiday but it is the prequel to Chocoholic and so will be gotten on the way to that achievement should you decide to do it.

Quests

Like most events, there aren’t a whole lot of quests which come with Noblegarden

Spring Collectors (A) // Spring Gatherers (H)

which lead to

The Great Egg Hunt (A) // The Great Egg Hunt (H)

Nothing much, but a small introduction and gives you an idea of how the event is run – like most holiday questlets.

Egg Hunting

Whilst eggs will be in similar areas to previous years (iIn the secondary starting areas such as Goldshire, Razor Hill and the like) they will apparently be more common and, no matter how many are trying to find them,  there will be available eggs (the first comment on this item references a blue post). Of course, even if eggs are constantly spawning as others are used there will still be a mad scrabble for them – I think I will probably make my way to Dolanaar because it’s inconvenient enough to get to compared to the other starting zones that it will hopefully be quieter.

Almost the whole event is based around egg collecting – they are the currency you need to buy items and, if you’re lucky, the items themselves so that you don’t need to buy them in the first place.   The currency itself is also used to do quests and is eaten up by some achievements – 100 chocolates alone for Chocoholic, so expect to be collecting quite a few.

Of course, with 3.1 items are now able to be sold back to the vendor for their purchase price in non-gold ‘currency’ within two hours of buying them.  This means that if you’re not bothered about keeping the items, but need to use them for achievements, you can buy the items, do the achievement and sell them back – so don’t do Chocoholic until after you’ve done all of your other achievements! *ahem*.

RNG

Unlike the other events so far, the RNG is mitigated by a system whereby you can buy the items if you do not find them in eggs – this means that people are not subject to not getting this section of  their “What A Long Strange Trip It’s Been” achievement due to bad luck.

Of course,  it wouldn’t be a blizzard holiday event without some form of RNG based luck so two achievements – Sunday’s Finest and Dressed for the Occasion – require you to find the items in eggs, not buy them.   Luckily, as mentioned, these are not needed for the holiday meta achievement but I would guess that this will still frustrate some avid achievement hunters.

Shinies

• [Tome of Polymorph: Rabbit]
• [Elegant Dress]
• [White Tuxedo Shirt]
• [Black Tuxedo Pants]
• [Spring Circlet]
• [Spring Robes]
• [Spring Flowers]
• [Egg Basket]
• [Blossoming Branch]

The first six come from eggs or from the vendor for chocolates, the last three come from the quests – though the blossoming branches can also be bought for eggs.  Blossoming branches can be used to help in completing achievements so make sure you don’t use them all up randomly until you’re done with ‘Hard Boiled’.

Shiny of the Event

I’m giving one item a spotlight here as I feel that it’s one of those little things which Blizzard has added to  the game which is just a nice touch – one of the things you can imagine started as a ‘wouldn’t it be kinda cool if…’.

[Spring Rabbit's Foot]

Wrath brought a plethora of new things for non-combat pets – it was the expansion which has really seen ncp’s go from being something not many people (except the dedicated few) wasted bag slots on to something which many people are interested in – even if only because of achievements!

Not only do pets have grooming kits, leashes, balls and the like, they can also act out little skits with other ncps – such as that between the Black Tabby and Stinker.  The pet from the Noblegarden event, whilst unassuming in its looks, is another step in that direction:

Noblegarden Rabbit Video

For those unable to view video’s or who just don’t want to – the rabbits, when brought next to others of their own kind, create little lovehearts, and erm.. the best word for it is ‘eject’ eggs into the surrounding area… which hatch into cute baby bunnies.   If that wasn’t enough, if one rabbit is then put away the remaining one’s heart will break – identical to the way the loved and heartbroken buffs looked during ‘Love is in the Air’.

The achievement ’spring fling’ is based around doing this, but I hadn’t quite expected much more than just bringing them near each other and pop, achievement, move onto the next… This is just absolutely awesome in my opinion – it’s a small thing but a nice detail which makes it more than just a fire and forget achievement and pet.

Reccomended Reading

Kaliope has a great Noblegarden guide which gives you tips on how to find eggs and get your achievements more easily!

Back in the day you had to gear up just to do a heroic, never mind a raid, and things took more ’skill’ and we had to dps, heal or tank uphill in the snow just to get a damn key for a heroic (which was further up the hill in deeper snow)!  Many complaints have been levelled about the ‘easy’ nature of Wrath and how fast people have out-done the content and I don’t entirely disagree (nor agree, either), but I have come to a conclusion in the last few days.

Easy heroics and easy starting raids are not bad!

Now, I hadn’t really been against them being easy in the first place (even though  for an organised and geared group, Naxx is now a chain-pull, over in 2 hours, snoozefest) but I hadn’t really realised how, long term, the ease of these could help Wrath have a little more lasting power or fun.  Now, this is coming firmly from an altoholic point of view but it also encompasses rerollers and slow levellers / starters.

In the Old Days…

When my shaman first hit 70 it was a nightmare – I had to run instance after instance to get my rep up, even if I didn’t need anything from that particular instance, and had to gear up to do heroics – even then, only the easier ones.  Crafted items were some of the best-in-slot pre-raid.  It took a veritable age for me to get Avarix Kara-ready because I wasn’t a huge fan of running instances over and over in one night and expecially not in pugs.

The reality was, too, that guildies rarely wanted to do normal instances – I couldn’t blame them, afterall it was almost two years into TBC and everyone had done them to death.  When the badge vendors were out, though, heroics at least were still relatively fashionable and a group was usually going – though I missed out on some of those, too, due to lack of rep.

Getting groups for normal instances was tough and, even just a few months into Wrath, its the same.

Now when I log on with my Death Knight, despite having just turned 80, I can go do a heroic with my guildies!  I’ve mostly stuck to the easier end of the spectrum so far but I’m still able to do heroics and contribute to them enough that I’m not a negative impact.  To put it more simply – I don’t require to be ‘carried’ by better geared friends.  Now, pugs might have looked at my few greens and said ‘no thanks’ and that is a limitation for newly dinged 80s without such a friendly guild or a guild who have higher constraints on their time (i.e. one with a lot of families or younger members) but reasonable upgrades are out there so that most classes can start with a relatively cheap, blue heroic kit or better as soon as they hit 80.

In Burning Crusade, in the time it took me to gear up from normal instances, my heroic buddies would be heading for Karazhan and I wouldn’t want to drag them through instances just for my alt etc.

Gear

With the exception of a few items (notably some crafted ones) most items from heroics were ‘easily’ replaced by Kara epics – that is, there was little by way of sidegrades or small upgrades – almost everything was a direct upgrade!  Whilst cool, it somewhat dampened the feeling of ‘winning’ against those tough heroic bosses (or at least doing them 25 times for that one upgrade).

Now, though, that is hardly the case.  Naxx 25 gear might replace heroic gear a little more quickly but there are a few heroic items which last well into Naxx 10 and many ‘upgrades’ are partial sidegrades.  That you can raid Naxx in quest blues is kinda nice – that you can raid Naxx smoothly in heroic gear means that, as with on Wednesday night this week, a bunch of mostly-alts and late starters / rerollers got through most of Naxx in a few hours.  Unfortunately we had to stop at Saph because it was getting late but I don’t doubt that we will finish the place later in the week.

Skill Level

Another factor in this ‘ease’ is the faily soft levelling curve between normal instances, heroics and Naxx.  Running from one to the other seems a much more smooth progression than in Burning Crusade where the ‘curve’ was more like stages you had to go through and big leaps in difficulty.  I remember walking into Heroic Sethekk (I think) with my shaman and just being gobsmacked by the amount of damage I was suddenly expected to heal compared to normal instances!   Despite the many cries of ‘must have more than 3k dps and have achievement’ people in LFG, most heroics in Wrath are entirely doable with slightly sub 2k dps and a not-amazingly geared tank and healer – I know because half of the instances I’ve run this week were with both a tank and healer who had decided to reroll / go back to an old main and have only just started gearing up!

Hell, we even almost completed a timed Stratholme this morning – only jinxed by an accident which ended in a wipe (we had 4-5 minutes left and were past the ‘breathing point’ already).  Some heroic achievements do take a little more skill or gear – say doing a 5-bronze Oculus to batter out two of the achievements at once or some of the speed-skill achievements (having two dps doing 4k dps on Maiden of Grief sorta guarantees the under 2 minutes achievement…hehe) but heroics on a base level are entirely doable with a hodge-podge group who at least have half a clue.

Tokens

Heroic tokens in Burning Crusade were a blessing and a curse – a blessing in that they allowed you to get gear from running heroics and Karazhan over and over.  There was a wide variety of gear on offer for badges – much more than there currently is for 5 and 10 man tokens at the moment but the gear quality varied enormously.  You might think the lack of badge gear would discourage people from running heroics over and to some extent I’d agree but I also think that it works out well as it sort of gives you a little push into Naxx or Sartharion.

Where in Burning Crusade most alts only ever got to go to Karazhan (maybe Maggy, Grull, SSC depending on your guild and time constraints), now alts could actually follow your main in progression at the 10-man level (or be equal to your main if you do 10-man as your main progression).  Personally, I’m not a huge fan of 10-mans on my shaman, not because I don’t like them, but because I feel shamans are more suited to healing larger groups and I enjoy healing larger groups. Also, ten mans are my ‘fun runs’ and I’d rather sit back and tank or dps for my giggles.  Or at least heal as a different class /shame.  Of course, this waits to be seen as, currently, we really only have one level of progression!

Keys

It is a shame keys were so frustrating as I do like the idea of keys.  However, in a system which encourages people forward into raid content a bit faster, and where normal to heroic progression is very easy, keys don’t make sense.  They’d just be a huge stumbling block.  Indeed, they often felt like that in Burning Crusade – I remember having to buy an epic flying mount on my first druid as, despite having done all the quests and buying my skill, I didn’t have enough Lower City rep to enter Sethekk Halls and summon Anzu!

As with gear, keys acted as another barrier to progession with friends – after they changed it to honored, it became a little less tough but getting revered just to be able to go to a heroic meant you were usually already sick of the place from running it on normal.

Happy Happy Joy Joy

So, overall, I can’t help but feeling Wrath is better for its simpler curve, its easier grouping, its ‘everyone should join in’ policy.  Perhaps people are too bored at the moment to see it or perhaps I’m being my usual, over-optimistic self but I can’t help but hope that, in the year to come, we find that this system is one which works out for the best long-term.

The Lunar Festival has wound down and, just when you’re starting to feel the post-event blues, the Love is in the Air event begins! Azerothian Valentines is no simple festival of love, but a mysterious series of events leading to sinister revelations about the nature of everyones sudden devotions!

Valentines in Azeroth is, for the most part, about the giving and recieving of gifts – to your loved ones, to your cities and even to strangers!

Blizzard’s own page on the festival can be found here.

Achievements

We can’t really fool anyone now – achievements are the bread and butter of ‘Holidays’ in WoW. As much as I enjoy the in game events for what they are, and the silliness they entail, I can’t also help but feel the replayability (my favourite word on this blog) is boosted by the rampant achievement hunting. It doesn’t take much imagination to see that boosting involvement in this way will boost ‘attendance’ at such events and that greater participation will make people feel there’s more things ‘going on’.

How will they keep that feeling up when everyones got one years worth of events achievements? Who knows, but I’ll be interested to see if they’re using it as a stop-gap until they have time to develop further content or whether they will expand upon achievements yearly as they once expanded upon the events themselves.  So, without further ado…

• Fool For Love (Alliance) // Fool For Love (Horde)

The sub-achievements for Fool For Love are almost identical for both factions:

• Heartmender
• Flirt With Disaster (A) // Flirt With Disaster (H)
• Nearest and Dearest
• Nation of Adoration (A) // Nation of Adoration (H)
• Sweet Tooth
• My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose
• Shafted!
• Lonely?
• The Rocket’s Pink Glare
• Fistful of Love
• Be Mine!
• I Pitied the Fool

A pretty standard list here, with the obligatory ‘pvp based’ achievement (which I will do in conjunction with setting out great feasts for double-achievementification!).  The ‘Fool For Love’ achievement page on wowhead contains some good tips for the various sub-achievements all listed together so I suggest you check it out before you begin!

There are also some achievements available which are not needed for the Fool for Love seasonal achievement:

• Lovely Luck Is On your Side
• Perma-Peddle

Quests

The Love is in the Air questline begins with Dangerous Love (A) // Dangerous Love (H) and spirals through the event, eventually leading you to Arathi Highlands and a discovery about the silly goings on!  Remember to click on the cauldron beside the quest NPC after talking to him to recieve one of several event outfits.

Gift Giving (A) // Gift Giving (H) – How to get gifts for these is explained below.  If you have terrible luck getting rockets, arrows or petals to use for your achievements this is a bonefide way of getting them – you also get an hour-long buff when you complete the quest which is different depending on the city where you hand it in.

But How Do I Do This Pledge Stuff?

It’s a pretty simple system, but it can be a bit confusing when you consider the amount of stuff you’re going to have in your inventory.

I created a visual guide to pledging for those who’ve never expressed their love to a cities worth of guards and shopkeepers before!

First stop is your local innkeep (or friendly barmaid) – any innkeeper with a heart icon above them will do.  From them, you need to buy the following:

OR

PLUS

Once you have the required items, use either perfume or cologne and go find a guard or citizen with a heart over their head – I’ll use one of Stormwind’s finest for this example – and tell them how much you really care for and apprecite them! Of course, they want to show their appreciation too, so they’ll return your gift with one of their own:

This ‘Gift / Pledge  of Adoration‘, a present which can contain all of the ‘big goodies‘* from the event, will give you a debuff called ‘Adored‘. This will last for one hour and whilst you have this you can only get ‘cheap‘ presents by giving your love tokens to NPCs – which you want to do as these still drop items you will need.

So do it again.  And again…. and… again...

Of course sometimes, if they catch on to your loose affections, they might not return your feelings in the way you had hoped.  In fact, they might break your callous, pledge collecting little heart!

This requires you to find a ‘friend’ with a bracelet, who’s willing to use it upon you to unbreak your broken heart with their friendship.

This shouldn’t be too hard, given that there’s an achievement to use the frienship bracelets – just remember to return this in kind if you can.  Friendship bracelets come from the bigger gifts / pledges of adoration.

Making City Pledges

So, you’ve gone the rounds in your city, chatted up guards and shopkeepers and you have a huge pile of random stuff.  What now? Using Stormwind as an example again:

Cologne versus Perfume!?

You might imagine the choice is simple here – just grab whatever and use it – but this simply isn’t true.  In many cities the guard balance is skewed and,  simply, you’ll be  able to ‘talk to’ more guards if you choose perfume – with the exception of Darnassus where the balance swings the other way!

*Big Goodies

So, what event-only items can we get our greedy hands on?

For the WoW fashionistas, theres the usual round of festival chic fashion.

• [Lovely Purple Dress]
• [Lovely Red Dress]
• [Lovely Blue Dress]

• [Purple Dinner Suit]
• [Red Dinner Suit]
• [Blue Dinner Suit]

All of the above come from the Cauldron near the quest NPC after you’ve completed the event questline.  Another, rarer dress drops from the gifts / pledges of adoration rather infrequently:

• [Lovely Black Dress]

This item does not bind to a character and thus sellable or tradeable to your other characters.

The other rare items available from the pledges / gifts are:

• [Romantic Picnic Basket]
• [Truesilver Shafted Arrow]
  

The first being a summonable picnic basket with parasol which creates a little heart buff over yourself and other people when they join you by clicking on the item.

Lastly, there are the bouquets:

• [Bouquet of Red Roses]
• [Bouquet of Ebon Roses]

These are needed for one of the sub-achievements and the Red Roses are easiest to get – soloable by most people level 70 and above.  Personally I found the Dire Maul boss which drops it to be the easiest to reach without killing things – as a resto shammy I like to avoid killing trash as it simply takes so much longer even when its low-level mobs.

These are so much fun to use in a raid but you have to actually equip them to use and wait for them to come off the ‘on use equip cooldown’ to come off before you can use them.  This, combined with a 5 minute cooldown makes them less randomly fun than the loose petals but you can use these bouquets throughout the year.

Take the time to enjoy the Love is in the Air Event – it’s the last for a couple of months in the Azerothian calendar!

<3

A lot of this information is gleaned from experience at previous Love is in the Air celebrations, so if there are any changes I’ll see about rectifying them asap as I actuall get around to doing them this year.  Any comments about such are welcomed!

Edit: Fixed the image from 4x item to 5x item :)

Edit2: Added the Lovely Luck Is On Your Side and perma-peddle achievements!

I’ve been trying to figure out what it is, this feeling that something is missing.  What could it be?  It took a while but I think I’m slowly beginning to understand…

A lack of patches.  No, I’m not one of those who are whining that things aren’t going fast enough or that everything sucks – to the contrary I think what Blizzard have done so far is amazing and they have had some really good ideas.  The feeling is more a matter of experience for me.  I stopped playing WoW just before I reached 60 on Aurik, to concentrate on Uni.  I then picked it back up with TBC, rolling a new character on a new realm.  This meant that when I hit 70 the Black Temple patch had just been released.  I had all of the ‘base’ 70 content and the Netherwing content to do now.  Again, I stopped WoW for a little while as most of my real-life friends stopped playing on the new realm (/sigh) and I had to move house.  When I came back I decided to go back to Aurik, level him to 70 and was graciously accepted into my current guild, Lightwalkers.

I levelled fast, geared up and started raiding – I had a lot of rep grinding and content to go through which I’d never seen – then there was Zul’Aman, and though I didn’t really go much there were new guild banks and new Dustwallow Marsh quests and speeded-up levelling (just when I started to level my shaman!).  Once again, things had changed and I was kept amused by them.  On the heels of that, came the Sunwell Patch and its dailies.  A more beautiful place I have not seen in WoW.  I know its not to everyones taste but I love the Blood Elf architecture, the music, the ideas behind that offensive.  It was a hub of activity – just a shame that it was so much ‘out of the way’ or I would have spent more time there outside of dailies.

After the Zul’Aman patch, too, I was asked to be an admin in Lightwalkers (I have no idea why, to this day) and I took my duties seriously and we had a lot to worry about with sorting out groups and gear for Black Temple / Mount Hyjal.  We raided right up until Wrath – something few guilds on our server did – and so I was kept busy.  I also changed my main to my shammy just post-ZA patch so I was shooting through, gearing up as best I could.

So What’s Different?

In Wrath I’ve been here since the start, I’ve gotten to max level and I’ve chewed my way through a lot of the content.  I’ve seen and defeated the basic version of every raid instance on 10 and 25 (and +1D).  We’re working on extra drakes but it does just seem a little… dull.  I’ve always had new things when I have played and have always felt behind the curve in terms of gear or levels or whatever.  I was always struggling to get myself to the level of my peers – but now?  I had an almost full set of 80 epics 3 or 4 weeks after hitting 80 – I know in this I am lucky as I got many drops which noone else could use (I’m the only main raiding resto shaman in our guild at the moment) but I still feel like there is so little to strive for at the moment.  I like being part of a relatively progressed casual guild, I enjoy getting into raid instances and seeing them and defeating them but it does feel like I’ve done all that I can do at the moment.

Also, from an ‘admin’ point of view there seems so little to organise.  No raid stacking, less worry about composition – pugs are so easy to do now because the requirements of the raid lead are so much less.

I miss getting brand new factions with their own story, I miss new quest hubs that I can play through on my main, I miss the Magister’s Terrace style hard but interesting 5-man instance, I miss new fishing dailies, damnit! I also miss buying recipes from random vendors all over the world, and whilst this is still so for my leatherworker and jewelcrafter, my alchemist got all of his off the trainer…

This is not a plea for them to change the content as-is, nor am I saying everything is ‘too easy’.  I appreciate their strategy in having easier instances for people to ‘learn’ raiding in if they’ve never done it or for guilds who’ve not raided much before or with less success to hone their skills.

I’m still a little bored, I still hunger for the new and I think it’s a product of the way I’ve played up until now.  I need a new ‘project’, something to occupy me when I don’t feel like playing an alt or doing more achievements.

/Random Introspective Post

(sorry for the lack of images, I’m in bed, ill, with Khi’s laptop and I have no screenshots or wowmodelviewer on it :( )

Just when ah’ wis gettin’ rid o’ the hangover fae Brewfest Hallow’s End arrives.  Ah dinnae ken why we celebrate the Forsaken’s holiday but, well, ah’m no gonna gie up a chance fer a wee celebration!

Hallow’s End is here again and I’m enjoying it immensely! This is the holiday of silly amounts of sweeties, copious costumes and er… bountiful bats?

Last year, Hallow’s End was the first of the revamped holidays.  It had a new boss, new shiny loot and quests in the starting towns.  It was the beginning of the truly interactive world events – ones which lured even those who had never thought to do a world event before.

It did this by giving away shinies – rings equivalents to the badge loot ones, as well as brooms, a non-combat pet and a plate helm with some funny on-use effects.  I had wondered how they would deal with this holiday, the first of the revamped, when it came to this year – many people are well geared and we’re close to the new expansion. Would it be more or less challenging? Would they keep the same format?

Well, it seems that for the most part the event for this year is very much the same but with the addition of some new loot – [The Horseman's Blade] and [The Horseman's Reins]!

Phat Lewts

For a lot of people, the event is simply a nice way to get the loot mentioned above, a chance to deck out a new alt in some purples or to get a hold of some items which are a just a little bit different or funky.  [The Horseman's Helm] amused me when I first saw it and the one-use effect of his blade is rather neat.  The [Sinister Squashling] and [Hallowed Helm] alongside the [Magic Broom] and perhaps even the Horseman’s Reins make up what has become the ‘usual fare’ for events – mounts, flavour items and pets.

Unusual or Unfair Holiday Drops ?

The story of the Headless Horseman – a vengeful spirit gone mad – is a nice addition to the Halloween theme (ghost stories!) and I can see why they give items pertaining to the actual ‘boss’ but it does seem a tad unfair that two of the high quality items he drops are only for a limited subset of classes – neither my druid nor shaman can use either item.  It would have been nice if they had added some fun on-use to the hallowed helm or something.  He drops the rings, of course, but it’s more the fun effect which I feel many classes miss out on – the laughing helm is wonderfully iconic.  I’d say the [Frostscythe of the Lord Ahune] somewhat made up for that but it excludes rogues and paladins.  It’s not a major issue but perhaps a nice mace or dagger for the next big holiday boss drop?  The scythe, helm and sword are very noticeable and different and are the sort of thing you keep even when they are no longer ‘useful’.  I’m not advocating giving everyone free and easy items of this sort (as making them more common would, I guess, take a little of their ’specialness’ away) but it would be nice to see a greater variation.

Trick or Treat?

Trick or Treating is a little less tedious than the Ancestors quests from the Lunar Festival or the Midsummer Fires – there are a lot fewer of them (as they’re restricted to places with inns) and each is very close to a flight point.  The quests also give a decent amount of experience (around 890 for my level 22 paladin) and a little gold (3g 75s at 70).

Holiday Achievements

The other addition to the holiday is, of course, achievements associated with it.  I have a post centred around those in the works so I won’t go into too much detail on them here but I do think the achievements system has really boosted the attendance of the event – those who do not care about the ‘epix loot’ are still struggling to get themselves a pet or a pumpkin helm for the event.

Of course, given it’s a limited time event the trouble has already started concerning achievements – people want them to be realistically available within the timeframe but others complain that it’s not really an ‘achievement if it’s easy.  I won’t step into the argument now but it does seem that the complaints about this have made some items easier to get -  the squashling and helm drop in trick or treat bags since the last maintenance  and some of the sub-achievements will even be excluded from the ‘title’ achievement – the one to get 20 of the masks.

In total there are around 160 achievement points available for Hallow’s End.

Random Decoration

Hallow’s End has my favourite decorations – the pumpkins and candles etc. are so very ‘wow’ in theme and give the whole place a creepy feeling.

Other fun things which come alongside the Hallow’s End festival, which makes it somewhat unque, are the critters running around – Black Cats roam the streets and bats fly overhead.  Killing a black cat will even give you bad luck!

Holiday Overload

I’m in two minds over Hallow’s End time-wise.  Obviously they can’t move ‘Halloween’ but having another of the ‘big’ yearly events happen so close to the last has actually made me want a little break from the festivities.  I think, though, this may be a consequence of not just the events being close together but also the addition of the new patch and the pre-Wrath event.

Of course, having zombies running around and plagues spreading whilst everyone is running around in skeleton or ghost costumes is a stroke of genius and very nicely timed on Blizz’s part.

Enjoy the rest of the festivities, though  I fear they may be a little overshadowed by all of the real undead walking around…

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.