Posts with tag harvest-festival

Every week, just at the start of the weekend, we catch up with the WoW Insider staff and ask them, "What are you playing this week?" -- otherwise known as WRUP. Join us to see what we're up to in and out of game, and catch us in the comments to let us know what you're playing, too!

Part of the "fun" of unemployment is trying to figure out what to do with those extra 40 hours or so of leisure time you get during the week. Sure, there's that whole looking for jobs thing, but that gets pretty old, so I've been playing Mega Man. A lot of Mega Man. Way too much Mega Man.

The music in the series is absolutely phenomenal, especially when you consider the limitations of the NES. There are some rocking covers of the stage themes out there. And, as you can see above, some more ... uh, original reimaginings of them. I guess I've never considered how sad and lonely Bubbleman's life really is. (Sebastian the Crab is a lying little jerk.)

But enough exploration of robots' non-existant emotions. This week, in addition to the usual What are you playing? question, we asked our columnists a very important question: Why is the Harvest Festival your absolute, hands-down favorite holiday?

Oh my god, you guys. We here at WoW Insider totally dropped the ball -- the exciting Harvest Festival started two days ago, and we didn't say a word about it! Don't worry, though. It's a week-long event, and you have until Sept. 13 to get in on all the fun!

And what fun is that, you may ask? Well, this year's Harvest Festival is going to be better than all past Harvest Festivals combined. It's got a plus-sized roller coaster for some of our more obese thrill-seekers, Larry Bird's 84-year-old Aunt Tilda, an all-organic corn maze, not three but four hospitality kiosks, famed little horse Li'l Sebastian, and ...

Oh wait, wrong Harvest Festival. This is the one in Azeroth with absolutely no achievements associated with it. The one, where, according to our own Daniel Whitcomb:

Yeah, it's a small holiday, and a weird one at that. I mean, you either honor Uther, who was a jerk to Tirion Fordring, ineffective against the Scourge and was betrayed and killed by his protege, or Grom, who betrayed the Orcish race to the Burning Legion at least twice, and whose clan is still one of the major sources of strife and bad Horde-Alliance relations on Azeroth today.

So, uh, yeah. How are you celebrating the Harvest Festival? Are you doing the one single quest associated with the holiday? And how will you ever be able to stand the 51-week wait until Harvest Festival 2012 once this one is over?

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The Epic Harvest Brewfestival Ride is today!

Those of us who are level 40 and above are going to dress up our Epic Mounts as Brewfest Kodos and ride to Honor a Hero in Ashenvale.

• When: 4:30pm EDT (1:30pm PDT, 2:30pm Server Time) Today
• Where: Meet in front of Orgrimmar on Zangarmarsh (U.S.)
• Who: Any Horde character with an Epic Mount
  
• How: Send a tell to Robinella or any It came from the Blog Lurker to join the guild

We will be earning enough tokens in Brewfest to obtain the ability to transform our mounts and then riding to honor Grom Hellscream. We will then return to Javnir Nashak and complete the one Harvest Festival quest (there is no Achievement).

If you have any questions about It came from the Blog, please read our FAQ.

See you soon!

What happens when Harvest Festival and Brewfest collide? The It came from the Blog Epic Harvest Brewfestival Ride! On Saturday, those of us who are level 40 and above are going to dress up our Epic Mounts as Brewfest Kodos and ride to Honor a Hero in Ashenvale.

• When: 4:30pm EDT (1:30pm PDT, 2:30pm Server Time) Saturday, October 3rd
• Where: Meet in front of Orgrimmar on Zangarmarsh (U.S.)
• Who: Any Horde character with an Epic Mount
  
• How: Send a tell to Robinella or any It came from the Blog Lurker to join the guild

We will be earning enough tokens in Brewfest to obtain the ability to transform our mounts and then riding to honor Grom Hellscream. We will then return to Javnir Nashak and complete the one Harvest Festival quest (there is no Achievement). If you do not have a high enough level character on Zangarmarsh to participate, there is still plenty of time to make a Death Knight and complete the starter quests.

If you have any questions about It came from the Blog, please read our FAQ.

We hope you'll join us for the Epic Harvest Brewfestival Ride!

The Harvest Festival is kind of the garbage holiday. It's the holiday that all the cooler holidays like Hallow's End and Brewfest make fun of, trip along the hall, and ostracize in the cafeteria. Harvest Festival is the weird kid who doesn't have any friends, smells funny, and whom teachers forget when making a headcount on the school bus. As far as holidays go, it's kind of the nothing holiday. It's there, but nobody really knows what it's all about and very few people bother to participate. I mean, hey, feast table outside of Orgrimmar! Then what?

Then nothing! Well, you see all sorts of ghosts all over the place (which is creepy, but hey, it's almost Hallow's End, anyway), but there's really nothing that stands out. At least the ghosts from the Lunar Festival had those cool moonbeams. No, Harvest Festival is the half-baked holiday that doesn't even have an Achievement. Yep, it's so bad that even a one day event such as Pirates' Day trumps it with an Achievement, and was even cool enough for WoW.com to organize some shenanigans around it. No wonder nobody hangs around that smelly kid!

So today, on the beginning of Harvest Festival, let's dedicate a word or two to World of Warcraft's most unimpressive holiday. What are you planning to do? Without any Achievements, you can even ignore it! If you're Horde, there's that quest to visit Grom Hellscream's monument in Ashenvale, but his son Garrosh has been such an unbearable asshat that even that has lost its charm. Unless Blizzard plans to hotfix the event and dredge it from the murky depths of suck, here's a Breakfast Topic to welcome the holiday that's so uncool that even artwork of a Harvest Golem looks better. And man, Harvest Golems are ugly mothers.

It's been an exciting couple of weeks in World of Warcraft. First there was the Harvest Festival, then Talk Like a Pirate Day, and now, Brewfest. Players are invited to kick back and relax with their friends while they participate in fun activities related to the alcoholic beverage we know and love -- beer.

Some of the festivities include the Dark Iron Dwarves, racing rams, and beer goggles. While the special mounts are rare drops now, it doesn't hurt to get out your stein and have a good time trying to get it. If you fail, well, you're still drinking, so that's a plus!

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Previously on Moviewatch ...

Just a friendly reminder for everyone: Today is the last day of the Harvest Festival, the annual event honoring the fallen heroes of the Horde and the Alliance. That means you have one more day to head to the front entrance of Ironforge and Orgrimmar to hang with some ghosts, buy some cheap fireworks (those Midsummer Ground Flowers are awesome, and I am totally stocking up), and go pay your respects to Grom or Uther.

Yeah, it's a small holiday, and a weird one at that. I mean, you either honor Uther, who was a jerk to Tirion Fordring, ineffective against the Scourge and was betrayed and killed by his protege, or Grom, who betrayed the Orcish race to the Burning Legion at least twice, and whose clan is still one of the major sources of strife and bad Horde-Alliance relations on Azeroth today.

And what about hanging out with all those ghosts? I mean, isn't anyone concerned that they could be scourge? And what about those Forsaken ancestors? Shouldn't they look like humans as ghosts, since they were humans in the first place? And wouldn't a good portion of those Orc and Troll ancestors come from the tradition of savagery and cannibalism and demon worship that the Horde is supposedly trying to break free from?

Oh well, at least it's free fireworks and free food. Enjoy it while you can! Brewfest is a scant week away too, so be sure to review the new Coren Direbrew loot and plan your trip to the Grim Guzzler now.

As a few of our readers have noticed, Blizzard has fixed the old problems with the Harvest Festival this year -- the new races of Blood Elves and Draenei can now do the quests that start outside of Orgrimmar and Ironforge. Last year was the first time the races had a chance to run them, and Blizzard hadn't implemented the quests for them yet. But this year, things are A-OK.

Unfortunately, there's no acknowledgement that they're new to the game -- while the quests do mention the character's class, they just see BEs and Draenei as just other members of their faction. It was a little weird running to honor Grom Hellscream with my Blood Elf, but if you want to be a good member of the Horde or Alliance (and pick up that nice food dispenser in the mail), have at it.

While doing my morning surf, I stumbled across some good-to-know news from the WoW LJ community. In this post by Platonic, she points out that the quest Honoring a Hero for the Harvest Festival is currently bugged for both the Blood Elves and Draenei. She also spotlights something else I thought was funny -- GMs apparently have telepathic pie powers!

As the Harvest Festival just started today on live realms, I'm sure the reports of this problem has already reached the developer's ears and they're undoubtedly working on a fix for it. As always, as soon as we hear any news, we'll be sure to let you know. For now, looks like the Draenei and Blood Elves will just have to content themselves with some free festival food and drink to take away with them. (After all, free food and drink means Mages get a break, and the rest of us get to save some gold!)