Project Lore

I know, I know. I gave Brewfest a hard time when it first started up. On top of my frustrations with blurry screens and fatigued rams, Blizzard was working through some bugs that prevented players from properly using their mugs to bonk dwarves attempting to steal beer kegs. Then, as if that wasn't enough, serious server stability issues set in after the unexpected release of Patch 3.2.2. But I suppose I ruled out this merry holiday a bit too soon, and have since grown to enjoy even those aspects that previously were driving me insane. Which is why I'm happy to report that Bornakk announced today the event has been extended for an additional two days:

"Brewfest is a time of year where the focus is placed squarely on the celebration of fun and food. In order to give everyone enough time to truly experience this event (and after some fine tuning on the part of the event organizers), we will be extending the event two additional days. The festivities will end on October 5th at 11:59PM, so don’t miss it."

Yes, it seems Blizzard has taken notice of our frustrations with bugged-out quests and lagged-out ram racing, and in compensation has decided to give us extra days to earn those all-important Brewfest tokens. Now that we've memorized the perfect routes for the Bark For.. quests, perfected the timing of whipping our mighty rams to go faster and learned (the hard way) that not all pugs are trustworthy when it comes to winning loot, we have the opportunity to get a little more out of the event. Personally, I got the Brewmaster title a couple of days ago by selling back my Brewfest garb before purchasing the Brew of the Month membership. But as a starting-out collector of vanity gear, I'm looking forward to getting a couple of pieces back. Plus, more chances at the ram or kodo mounts, and that mighty (and highly auction-able) BoE Tankard O' Terror. I'll drink to that!

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Which is the Dark Iron Dwarf, and which is the keg? They're both short and fat - your guess is as good as mine!

As iTZKooPA already pointed out in his detailed Brewfest guide, the onset of this merriest of holidays brings with it a host of achievements and quests to keep us amused while chugging enough beer to dizzy even the stoutest of dwarves. I didn't get too into Brewfest last year, since I was low-level and focused on changing that. So this year I was excited to dive right in from the start. So why am I already hungover from all the content we have to do for the event? I think it's because two of the repeating themes of the holiday revolve around two of my least favorite antics: performing actions when not being able to see anything (in this case, because of drunken blurriness), and controlling a mount (for Brewfest, a ram) that has built-in limitations. For some of you, these may be your most favorite in-game tricks ever! But for me, not so much. I like the concept of Brewfest, and of course, knocking back some drinks should have some side effects on the drinker. Usually, I think the in-game drunk effect of blurred vision and the inability to walk straight is pretty funny. And I still enjoyed it the first couple of times around. But then I had to get smashed over and over again to catch Wolpertingers, find pink elekks, jump off a ledge in drunken stupor and, of course, fight back Dark Iron Dwarves intent on stealing our brew. Day one of Brewfest, it took my server only a couple of tries to win the epic battle by smashing those thieves over the head repeatedly with a giant mug. There's been some debate over whether this is bug-related or just because people aren't targeting the dwarves right, but both Monday and yesterday, amidst post-patch-lag, we had absolutely no luck in winning the fight. Which means 20 less tokens so far, but that could add up to a lot more if we don't get with the program. Maybe I'm being too hard on the ram quests. They're not that horrible, once you get the right whipping rhythm down for keeping them at a steady pace without getting fatigued. Just don't make the mistake of being in a group when you complete them. I've had two separate occasions already in which only one person in a group was able to turn in the Bark For... quests, then it would automatically fail the other person. Once again, that could be a bug or it could be Blizzard's way of preventing people from having an easier time completing the quests because they could ride on the coattails of someone else. One thing I have been thoroughly enjoying is whipping up on Coren Direbrew and getting some sweet loot. If you group up right and use your alts, you can get in quite a few runs every day on this guy and keep trying for those mounts and weapons! So has anyone else been having a hard time fighting back the Dark Iron Dwarves? What other bugs have you encountered? Despite my frustrations with a couple I've come across, I'm aiming to get Brewmaster - so that's enough to keep me chugging. Cheers!

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