Posts with tag midsummer-fire-festival

Every Thursday, The Overachiever shows you how to work toward those sweet achievement points. This week, some holidays are easier to survive than others.

I've been getting a lot of comments and feedback from players recently over troublesome elder placement during the Lunar Festival (the one next to the Razor Hill flightmaster seems to be a particular issue -- more on this in a future article), and it spurred me to start thinking about problematic holiday achievements as a whole. Thing is, Blizzard's really put a lot of effort into its holidays over the past few years, and most of them are much less time-consuming and frustrating then they used to be.

So how many really troublesome holiday achievements are there these days, anyhow? Most of them didn't figure prominently in our evil achievements series (with one sterling exception), but I'll grant that not all of them are sunshine and roses.

But then of course, there's that one. Yes, that one -- the achievement shat into existence by Satan himself onto a bed of Ed Hardy clothing with bad Japanese pop music playing in the background. You know the one I'm talking about.

Every Thursday, The Overachiever shows you how to work toward those sweet achievement points. This week, all hell breaks loose.

Hey folks. The Littlest Pet Shop option was the most popular choice in last week's The OverAchiever: Wrapping up Mountain O' Mounts, but that was before all manner of patch 4.3 goodness was datamined on Tuesday night. I spent the subsequent 24 hours in a caffeine-fueled haze running three characters around the PTR investigating the new achievements for you.

I bring tidings of great, albeit currently bugged, joy to you all.

Our friends over at Wowhead have uncovered the first batch of new patch 4.3 achievements, and there are some pretty awesome ones. Most of them refer to either new holiday content (primarily Winter Veil and Midsummer Fire Festival) or the new Darkmoon Faire, although there are a few achievements from the new dungeons.

Be warned that the titles and descriptions of these achievements may contain spoilers. Here are a few of my favorites:

• That's Not Canon! comes from defeating a certain boss in the Caverns of Time in a certain manner. A bit of a thumbed nose at people who don't like all this time travel? Maybe, but the title's hilarious enough that I can't stop chuckling.
• A-Caroling We Will Go Now this is how you spread Winter Veil cheer. I don't know about you, but I can't wait to don my gaudiest sweater and break some Orcish eardrums.
• I Was Promised a Pony Looks like our good friend Ghostcrawler got some achievement naming duties this time around. You can't deny it forever, Greg. It's true, and you know it. We are still waiting.

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Brace yourselves for what could be some of most exciting updates to the game recently with patch 4.3. Look at what's ahead: new item storage options, cross-realm raiding, cosmetic armor skinning and your chance to battle the mighty Deathwing -- from astride his back!

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Last Saturday, It came from the Blog set fire to the Eastern Kingdoms for this year's Midsummer Flamefest. We started off in Silvermoon City with a party, then continued south through the continent until we reached Ironforge -- where we met our deaths. We honored or extinguished all of the fires in blood elf lands and Forsaken lands. We even bopped over to the Western Plaguelands, since it was right there.

/point

There is no longer a flame to desecrate if you are Horde in Hillsbrad, so our first Alliance flame was Refuge Pointe in Arathi. We also got the ones in Menethil, Thelsamar and Khaz Modan. We didn't meet very much Alliance resistance until we got to Ironforge, but there, the Allies made up for it. A widdle gnome mage took me down several times, when the dwarven guards didn't get me themselves. Regardless, the event was tons of fun.

I didn't manage to get pictures of my many pathetic deaths, but they are all caught on video. You can see the gallery of flame below.

We have events at least once every month. Please join us!

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Please join us on Zangarmarsh (US-PVE-H) in It came from the Blog. Anyone can invite, so /whisper Roblinator or any online member. You are all welcome as long as you play by our simple rules -- basically, don't be a funsucker! Visit the guild FAQ for more details.

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We're setting fire to the Eastern Kingdoms! Come join us in game on Zangarmarsh (US-PVE-H) or by watching the stream above and participating in the chat after the break.

Update: The stream is now over. You can watch the video replay by clicking the image above.

It's that time of year again, when It came from the Blog sets fire to the Azeroth countryside.

• When: Saturday, June 25 at noon EDT (9 a.m. PDT, 10 a.m. server time) for the pre-event gathering and 12:30 p.m. EDT for the actual event
• Where: Meet at the flame in Silvermoon City on Zangarmarsh (US-PVE-H)
• Who: Any level Horde player
• How: Ask any member of It came from the Blog for an invite, if you are not already in one of our family of guilds.
• What: Flames. Duh.

This is an all-levels event that will begin with a party and end in guaranteed death. So bring your party gear and keep your shiny armor in the bank.

Last year, we had two epic flame related events. We sauntered around the Eastern Kingdoms for Flamefest 2010 and we also flamed Kalimdor during the Server Maintenance Party. Hundreds of people showed up for the latter, which was fun and terrifying at the same time. I don't expect anywhere near that many this year, but the more the merrier. We have yet to crash the server and have room for hundreds in our event guild.

I will be streaming the event as usual, so if you can't join us on Zangarmarsh, you can watch the video. Please join us!

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Please join us on Zangarmarsh (US-PVE-H) in It came from the Blog. Anyone can invite, so /whisper Roblinator or any online member. You are all welcome as long as you play by our simple rules -- basically, don't be a funsucker! Visit the guild FAQ for more details.

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Each week, WoW Insider brings you a fresh look at reader-submitted UIs as well as Addon Spotlight, which focuses on the backbone of the WoW gameplay experience: the user interface. Everything from bags to bars, buttons to DPS meters and beyond -- your addons folder will never be the same.

Additions to the default user interface come in a variety of shapes and sizes. You've got your monumental addon and UI renovations that change almost every aspect of the substance and style of WoW's UI. You've also got the essentials, pieces of Lua code that change the fundamental nature of your class, like threat meters. Then there are the little guys -- utilities that add functionality to pieces of the interface that sort of live in the background.

Today is utilities day on Addon Spotlight. I've got three little addons for you that add functionality or just plain help you out with your game play experience. One of the greatest functions of addons is creating this sense of power in the user's hands, and I think these three little guys prove that point. Sit back, relax, and rev up those comments -- it's Addon Spotlight time.

Blizzard has been getting hit with a few complaints since the Midsummer Fire Festival began -- that the holiday was just a stat-bump for the items and was relatively the same event as last year. Even the highlight item, the Frostscythe of Lord Ahune, was part of the controversy. Bashiok took to the forums to discuss the changes that had to happen for the Midsummer Fire Festival to even happen and gave players a clue to confirm the widely held belief that Hallow's End this year will play into the larger story between the Forsaken and the worgen.

The Midsummer Fire Festival remained largely the same due to the amount of work that had to go into rearranging fire locations due to the cataclysm, changing around all of the decorations, and generally spending a lot of time switching over from the old world. Bashiok does cop to the fact that the event is more or less the same as last year's, but reminds us that the Midsummer Fire Festival has already had its major overhaul back a few years ago.

The more interesting news, however, is that Bashiok says we've got some surprises coming our way with respect to Hallow's End, WoW's take on Halloween. We've been long speculating, based on data-mined items and story cues, that Hallow's End will deal with the continuing story of Sylvanas' march into the kingdom of Gilneas and the worgen's fight to take back their homeland. Plus, who doesn't love the classic Halloween monster movie tropes of zombies and werewolves?

Bashiok confirmed that there are changes in store for Hallow's End. To what extent, we do not know. However, I will be looking forward to surprises because, really, I love surprises. I'm a giant sucker for surprises. Bring on the surprises!

Everyone seems to be knocked out by summer storms. Alex is stormed in, raiders were afk'ing because of tornados, and people across the land are screaming about lost internet connections. You know what this means, right? We need to demand that the government create better weather-controlling devices. I mean, really, it's the year 2011...

Aftermathmatical asked:

My Q, is that with the new PvP mount for RBGs, will we be able to send those to the opposite faction? I understand that we won't get a horde mount on my alliance character and vice versa, that they would change to the right faction. Will they allow this though, or will we have to earn them within our faction? (I know I know killing tons of alliance on my horde mage so I can earn and alliance mount on my Ally druid lol)

Most likely yes. When you purchase the level 25 guild mount reward (which is Bind on Account) you can send it to opposite faction members and it magically turns into that faction's version of the mount (either the lion or the scorpion.) I am assuming that the PVP mounts work exactly the same way. There's no reason to believe it would be anything different.

In between the weather knocking out my power here in Milwaukee, WI, I managed to sit in the dungeon queues long enough to discover that ... they're broken! Thanks to Lord Ahune, instance servers are overall stressed beyond capacity despite Blizzard's constant upgrades over the years.

Vrakthris

It looks like overall it is due to the influx of everyone running the Fire Festival encounter, plus arenas, and normal dungeons.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2712201373

Our Realm Technicians are looking into it and making what adjustments they can to improve connectivity and performance. If more information becomes available we'll be certain to pass it along.

source

We have no ETA on when the situation will be resolved, but the most recent post in the above-linked thread was a mere 5 minutes ago as of this writing, so it continues to be an ongoing issue.

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Things are heating up all over Azeroth for the Midsummer Fire Festival. Well, everything except the Frostscythe of Lore Ahune, that is. Blizzard updated the holiday Ahune cloaks to ilevel 353 for players to grab, but Ahune's trademark staff just got the "scale" upgrade -- it's not really ideal for the classes it is intended for. In fact, it's fairly worthless for intellect-reliant classes. Bashiok responded on the official forums that to make Ahune's Frostscythe an ideal weapon stat-wise would be to dissuade players from getting their weapon upgrade in ZA or ZG.

Many players were concerned with the Frostscythe's stats because of its inflated +700 stamina instead of plus intellect, which casters obviously prefer, since stamina has been normalized across gear. To be fair, I think it is completely fine to have this holiday fluff item be a non-ideal, cosmetic item that players can wear for it's on-use effect and prestige-luck. Not every item that drops has to be the ideal, especially during a holiday that is coinciding (potentially) with patch 4.2 dropping. That staff you want to be ideal so badly isn't going to be exactly ideal in week if the patch hits June 28. For now, it was an easier alternative to just scale the item opposed to tinkering around and making something perfect. I'd say just leave it as a fun, unique item.

The Midsummer Fire Festival begins today all across Azeroth. The celebration runs from June 21 through July 2. This year, however, the celebration of all things fire has a somewhat different meaning for players. Soon, the tenuous alliance we all have with fire is set on its head, as the very essence of fire himself launches his final attack on Hyjal and the world tree Nordrassil. This is the last Fire Festival that Ragnaros will exist in -- we will most likely defeat him in the Firelands during this festival.

For me, the Fire Festival is the final holiday achievement I need for the mega meta-achievement What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been on my warrior, who was created around this time last year when I decided to change classes. The warrior went from orc to goblin to blood elf and finally night elf when I moved over to Alliance to raid with a new group. He's had a shaky year, but every challenge has been met with resolve. The Fire Festival represents my new beginning into a different class, and it is interesting to see how much has changed in a year.

But for Ragnaros, King Fire himself, this will be his last. Little fire elementals all across the land who aspire to greatness like Ragnaros will have their hopes dashed and dreams crushed -- the Firelord's end will begin, ironically, while we celebrate fire.

What are you looking forward to most about the Midsummer Fire Festival? Are you going to queue up for Ahune right away when the servers come up?

If you're not sure what you're doing this holiday, check out WoW Insider's guide to the Midsummer Fire Festival achievements.

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Every Thursday, The Overachiever shows you how to work toward those sweet achievement points. This week, we may actually nab that damn pet off the Midsummer boss this year.

The Midsummer Fire Festival will run from Tuesday, June 21 to Monday, July 4 this year. While there aren't actually a lot of achievements associated with the Festival -- the meta, which awards the Flame Warden title to Alliance players and Flame Keeper title to Horde players, consists of only six achievements -- three of them require you to put in some serious travel time, and one also requires a set of dangerous trips to enemy capitals. If you're starting from scratch, this is definitely one of the more work-intensive holidays you'll have to clear for What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been.

The holiday's unlikely to have changed significantly from its 2009 and 2010 incarnations, but we do know that Lord Ahune (the holiday boss) has an updated loot table with ilevel 353 drops. As you might have guessed, coordinates for Cataclysm-era fires to honor/desecrate have almost certainly changed as well. Consequently, I've expanded our previous guides to reflect the changes we know about. I'll also be updating fire coordinates to reflect Cataclysm zone overhauls once the holiday goes live.

EDIT: This article is undergoing revision to make updates to fire coordinates. Please bear with us as we make corrections, and remember: If in doubt, fires are nearly always within a very short walk from a local flight path! And thank you to all of our readers who've written in!

The WoW community site was recently updated to let players know that the ninth PVP season would be ending as soon as June 28 rather than the June 21. What does this mean for us? Unofficial confirmation that patch 4.2 has been moved back at least a week. The new probable release date is June 28.

Earlier this week, a new balance patch hit the PTR and some decently sized changes to abilities and their associated numbers were made. No new assets were added, but a lot of numbers were moved around. After Ghostcrawler's excellent balance post and call for feedback, we guessed that this PTR patch could have the potential to push the 4.2 back a week. Well, it looks like it did.

Update your calendars, folks. You've got an extra week to push tier 11 content and have a patch-free Midsummer Fire Festival, which launches on June 21.

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The news is already rolling out for the upcoming WoW Patch 4.2! Preview the new Firelands raid, marvel at the new legendary staff, and get the inside scoop on new quest hubs -- plus new Tier 12 armor!

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If you're a fan of the in-game holiday events, rejoice as we're now seeing updated loot for the Midsummer Festival. It appears that in addition to the infamous Frostscythe, all the cloaks from the event have been updated to iLevel 353 epics on par with the new Zul'Gurub and Zul'Aman instance drops. That means we have the following items available:

• Frostscythe of Lord Ahune
• The Frost Lord's War Cloak
• The Frost Lord's Battle Shroud
• Cloak of the Frigid Winds
• Shroud of Winter's Chill
• Icebound Cloak

Thanks to the folks at Wowhead, you can see these items and others new to patch 4.1.

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WoW Patch 4.1 is on the PTR and WoW Insider has all the latest news for you. From previews of the revamped Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub to new Valor point mechanics to the new Archaeology items.

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