Love Is In My Bags

I'd forgotten just how chock-full of seasonal holidays WoW is this time of year, even in its Classic incarnation. After just wrapping up the Lunar Festival, we transitioned straight into WoW's version of Valentine's Day, called "Love Is In The Air".

I have to confess that I had little to no memories of this particular holiday, so my first reaction upon talking to an innkeeper about the event was confusion. I proceeded to Wowhead, where they had a guide up as usual. This alleviated my confusion somewhat, but still left me with a feeling of: "Really? That is it?"

I proceeded to dig through this blog's archives to check whether I'd had anything to say about this holiday in the past and found this post, which was written during Wrath but before the holiday had undergone its first major revamp, and in which I described it with the words: "card collections and poetry collections and food collections and bracelets and candy hearts and rose petals and aaaargh", which sounds about right.

In short, it's a holiday dominated by temporary "fun" items and buffs. The buffs aren't bad (I presume) if you're a raider for example, and make sure to buff yourself just before the start of a raid (Classic buffs are very powerful), but for someone like me, who's more casual and quite likely to lose a lot of any given buff's duration to idling around in town it's not that exciting.

And all the "fun" collectibles that you're supposed to gather from the NPCs are just bad when bag space is such a scarce resource. I seem to remember that even back in the day I tended to chuck anything and everything that wasn't immediately useful because I didn't want to put up with this much junk.

So I think I'll largely pass on this one for being too annoying and not sufficiently rewarding to me. That said, I feel a certain admiration for the way old Blizzard really tried to make every holiday feel different back in the day, even if this one is a bit of a miss for me personally. I can't say I ultimately preferred the way they later homogenised them all to be about gathering a currency to buy rewards and killing a special boss once a day.

Also, I do love watching people unironically ask in general chat whether anyone can cure their heartbreak, and gaining buffs like "The Power of Friendship". If nothing else I feel vaguely compelled to always make sure to have some Unbestowed Friendship Bracelets at hand, just so that I can mend any broken hearts I might come across. It's an interesting dynamic, NPCs making your character sad and fellow players cheering you up. It certainly gives the event a unique atmosphere.