The Midsummer Fire Festival is nearly upon us. Starting on Monday, June 21st and continuing to June 30th, players will be able to light their faction’s fires, extinguish the enemy’s fires, and more.
Most of the time, in-game holidays are of little consequence to players unless they are pursuing a Violet Proto-Drake. There are some minor quests with little reward and some vanity items and gear that are inferior to most other accessible puggable gear. Why is this year going to be different?
Let’s go through some reasons:
- The new and updated queueing for holiday bosses. The huge success of the Dungeon Finder has caused the queueing system to be extended to holiday bosses. Now, when a holiday is active, you can queue to fight for a seasonal boss if there is one available. You can successfully kill them once per day, which is a huge improvement from one fight per day per person, which allowed for some confusing group forming, scamming, and other problems. Finding a group and getting to obscure locations like The Slave Pens should be much easier.
- Updated looting system for holiday bosses. Previously, a daily quest would be available, and usually a group of 5 players would fight a boss five times per day and roll on the loot five ways. Now, you simply get a bag with loot in it. There is no rolling on vanity-type items. Gear will still drop from the boss, likely in higher quantities since there are less attempts per person, so that gear can be allocated to the right person.
- Updated and somewhat relevant loot. The loot table includes iLvl 232 gear. This is great news for alts, new max-level players, and non-raiders. Here is what we know will be available:
- Cloak of the Frigid Winds (healer cloak)
- Shroud of Winter’s Chill (spell DPS cloak)
- Icebound Cloak (tanking cloak)
- The Frost Lord’s War Cloak (physical DPS cloak)
- Frostscythe of Lord Ahune (staff with an awesome on-use effect)
The great thing about these cloaks is that there are no other iLvl 232 cloaks in the game. As such, these are the best cloaks in the game that you can get outside of raiding for nearly all specs. As for the staff, it has some great caster stats. You can get the Engraved Gargoyle Femur in the much more difficult and time-consuming Heroic: Pit of Saron, which has hit instead of crit. Additionally, it’s a great vanity item with the on-use shiny effect. Here are some probable non-gear items:- Formula: Enchant Weapon – Deathfrost
- Scorched Stone (non-combat pet)
There is also a possibility that we may get upgraded necklaces as well. Here are the level 70 versions from two years ago:
- A mountain of available Horde/Alliance rep. Extinguishing the fires is great gold, experience, and reputation. With the city reputations more relevant with the Argent Tournament this year, this might be a much faster method to advance in the Argent Tournament.
- Possible Cataclysm tie-ins. Ragnaros and the elementals will play a major role in Cataclysm, so we may see some new lore tidbits. Last year, the Summer Scorchlings would occasionally do the following:
Summer Scorchling
Thank you again for this delectable incense.
Festival Scorchling devours the incense. It’s ravenous!
So good! So packed with energy!
It starts growing in size.
It has everything a growing scorchling needs!
I can feel the power SURGING within me!
Festival Scorchling bellows with laughter!
Now! Finally! Our plans can take effect!
KNEEL, LITTLE MORTAL! KNEEL BEFORE THE MIGHT OF THE HERALD OF RAGNAROS!
At this point for a split second he becomes Wisp of Ragnaros.
YOU WILL ALL PERISH IN FLAMES!
He quickly loses strength becoming once again a tiny scorchling.
Festival Scorchling blinks…
Ah. I was merely jesting…So, we may see Ragnaros or other elementals with more to say about the impending Cataclysm, as they have probably been plotting with Deathwing as of late. Who knows, maybe even Ahune may have something to say about all of this.
Oh, one more comment on having an enjoyable Midsummer Fire Festival:
Are you going to re-experience the Midsummer Fire Festival this year? Any new players trying it for the first time or old players trying again to complete the meta-achievement for What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been? I’m personally going to try to deck out Heartbourne and Nightbourne with some pre-raiding gear and maxing out Heartbourne’s Horde rep. Bladebourne will be going for the pet.
Having completed this meta last year on my Hunter I may either try it on my Death Knight who is almost level 80 or I may simply stay on my Hunter and drop Ahune throughout my vacations. I couldn’t have planned my days off better even if I had tried.
Just an FYI Heartbourne:
“A mountain of available Horde/Alliance rep. Extinguishing the fires is great gold, experience, and reputation. With the city reputations more relevant with the Argent Tournament this year, this might be a much faster [way] to advance in the Argent Tournament.”
On the post, I love Midsummer. I sometimes wonder if I subconsciously do it on purpose, but I always seem to be leveling up new toons when Midsummer is around the corner. It’s amazing exp. The turn in exp is equivalent to a quest of your level (I think), and all you have to do is run around. I leveled my 35 Warrior (my main now) to level 38 almost 39 off of these.
For the Meta… I think I might try for it again. I used to play my Hunter as my main, because he was my first toon and had the most achievements. Now, I play my Warrior because, well they’re awesome, but because I see more content – and I’m a Warrior at heart. I don’t know, things might become interesting in all of the events as we get ready for Cataclysm that will draw me to go after the Meta while seeing Lore.
My Druid’s RP set demands that staff.
This is the last event my Hunter needs for the drake, my priest needs this and christmas, and my pally just started the events with the easter one I think.
For the most part I always had fun with this event. I did it the first year I started WoW when my hunter was a mere level 30 something(I only remember this because I was doing the fire dances in STV for the exp boost) and some 70’s at the time took me around to a few places for some silly pvp and fire pissing fun. I think that was the day I actually started to enjoy this game since it was the first thing I did that was outside the grind of leveling.
Most the fires can be reached by just getting off a flight path so by far, this is one of the easier of the events that make you go all over the game to complete it.