Midsummer Madness

I know everyone is writing about the fire festival so i was going to resist temptation and not post on the topic. However having run multiple toons all over Azeroth and Outlands in search of blossoms, in the end the little flames whispering to me from the fires won out and i decided, lets just jump on the bandwagon.

The Fire Festival is one of the saddest festivals in my opinion. I know its the height of summer and the sun is shining but revisiting Azeroth and seeing all these zones so empty and forlown seemed more suited to some kind of midwinter or autumnal event. That sense of loss and trying to relive what went before was everywhere. Riding through Blackrock mountion and seeing the ghosts of all those raiders fighting pvpers for the right to raid BWL and MC. Still hearing the voices of raidleaders long since rerolled or quit yelling at the last man to arrive, now being ganked by a 20 man raid of rank farmers.

Riding through Feralas and finding Lethon let out to pasture, no longer hunted or fought over like some exotic prize.

Im writing this alttabbed from the game, my paladin was sitting afk at the Southshore flightpoint and when I tabbed back.. still alive. The Burning Crusade shrunk the world in a sense, apart from the odd leveler in my travels from fire to fire, Ive hardly seen a soul, yet Shattrah/outlands is crawling with life.

Sure change is everywhere and should be embraced. My problem is not that the game has moved on, but that there is so much beautiful and pretty much unused content just sat there. Most people leveling now are rerollers or alts, so they just power through it heading to Outlands as fast as possible and so it just sits there, untouched with just a whisper of what it used to be. Remember the patch notes which included "The Barrens now feels more alive", well, we need more of that.

So thats the reflective and emo part done, on to the positives of this years festival for me.

Farmed gold simply by traveling. Best idea in a long time Blizzard <3 Revisited lots of places I havent been to been to in a long time, especially Winterspring, Felwood (my old haunts on my priest, dreamfoil/plaguebloom and icecap farming) and Crossroads (scene of my first pvp experiences pre-battlegrounds on my warlock). Im also a collecter/hoarder so any ingame event which allows you to collect "junk" is great in my eyes. The only real disappointment for me has been the lack of pvp opportunities whilst flag collecting. Only one person tried to kill me, a warlock in orgrimmar who also failed to notice the gnome rogue riding ahead of me. Everyone else has been all festivally and party spirited, more into cross faction dancing and lots of hugging than violence. Im one of those hippy types who hates attacking first, so i need people to give me an excuse and this summer no one seems to. Oh and the dancing draenei flame thingie needs to be larger. Other than that, its been one of the best festivals so far but nothing can beat Hallows End, im a orange candy and pumpkin girl at heart.