I've said in the past that I tend to run somewhat hot and cold as far as WoW's in-game holidays are concerned. Sometimes I'll really get into one, but most of the time I'll largely forget that they exist. Even if I do notice the seasonal decorations, I'll usually just go "huh, it's Brewfest again, is it" and then do exactly nothing about it.
Right now, Midsummer/Fire Festival is on, and I was going to ignore it once again, but then I heard Taliesin on the T&E podcast talk about how there was a new quest line that was very fun, so I decided to check that out.
And indeed, it was quite fun! There's a new daily quest to fly through flaming blossoms above Silvermoon or your faction capital, but it also comes with a one-time chain that sends you flying all over Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms while a Fire Festival NPC tells you about a bit of human, dwarven and tauren lore related to the festival.
I then went back to also do some of the old dailies and slay Ahune, the Frost Lord ("The ice stone has melted!" will forever be a meme to me.) While doing the torch-tossing and catching dailies, I was surprised to see that at some point, Blizzard apparently decided to simplify these - the tossing quest has about three times as many markers going up now, allowing you to finish it much more quickly than in the past, and during the catching quest I noticed that my torch's shadow was very visible and I could no longer see other people's torch shadows, which was what used to make the quest difficult to complete in the past (since you could get confused, accidentally run after someone else's torch and fail - it used to be a hot tip to do this daily on the Exodar where nobody else was there to distract you).
I then did the same dailies in MoP Classic for comparison, but I couldn't really tell whether that expansion already had the update for the catching quest or not, as nobody else was around doing the quests when I was there. I also queued for Ahune there and the wait seemed to take forever compared to retail. When I finally got a group I found that the boss was hilariously undertuned, to the point that you could nuke him down from range most of the way right through his damage reduction. In general, the experience in MoP felt weirdly lonely. I always like to point out that MoP Classic still has a lot of players, but it does seem very raid-loggy. You don't really see a lot of players out and about doing lower-level or more casual content much.
Anyway, aside from Midsummer, there's also a two-day "micro holiday" this weekend. I'm even worse with these than with the regular holidays, in the sense that I don't think I've ever actually taken part in one other than free t-shirt day, which I just happened to notice in Stormwind at the time and which really grew my shirt collection.
The news about this newest addition caught my attention because it's called "Darkspear Dash", featured lots of rainbows and I saw some comments about it being a case of Blizzard adding support for something that was previously a community event. I think the main reason I lingered on the news was that it actually confused me at first: Wasn't that event the running of the gnomes? Why make the official version trolls instead?
Fortunately the answer was only a quick Google search away. The running of the gnomes is in October, for breast cancer awareness, and already has its own micro holiday (the Great Gnomeregan Run). The Darkspear Dash was in fact dreamed up by the same person, but it's on Horde side with trolls (they have a bit more explanation for "why trolls" on their website) and benefts the Trevor Project instead. Mystery solved!
I then heard a few more people talking about taking part and thought "eh, why not". My old main was a troll after all, even if she's only level 32 these days. So I logged her, found the starting point on the Echo Isles and went for a run. Blizzard really was quite considerate of runners' needs, with a barber and a transmogrifier right next to the starting line to make sure everyone can look their best while running. While you can technically fly to go as fast as possible, I opted for my old ground mount myself, a compromise between wanting to enjoy the experience and not wanting to be too slow.
For most of the run I was by myself - in the Plaguelands I saw someone on a Brutosaur behind me for a bit, but they fell off the horizon again after a while. At the entrance to Eversong I ran into two other players, one of them on foot, and we slowed down for a while to all run together. At one point I had to AFK for a bit and set myself to auto-run, and when I came back I was dead in a ditch, eaten by one of those nasty skull level cats in new Eversong. Oops! No big deal though, I just picked myself up again and rode the rest of the way by myself again. It did make me think that I really should level an alt through the Midnight story on foot because the views are so much more impressive at ground level.
Anyway, that would've been it, except... in the late afternoon I spotted someone on Bluesky posting about the fact that the actual community run (which still exists as well) was about to start on Argent Dawn-EU. Apparently this year was also going to be the first time it happened on the EU servers! I looked at the clock and went "snap, that's in only twenty minutes"... and remembered that I did in fact also have a low-level troll alt on Argent Dawn, from back when Cataclysm first came out. So I logged into that one and made my way to the Echo Isles a second time.
What a difference that was! This time the place was absolutely packed, with people spamming rainbow toy effects everywhere. I made use of the transmogger to make my Cataclysm levelling gear look a bit more put together and the barber to change my cat form back to its old colour (at some point my troll druid's cat form had turned white and I don't know why, I just know from screenshots that this wasn't her original colour).
The run was originally meant to start at 5pm my time, but minutes before the scheduled start, some yells were going out that the launch was supposed to be delayed. Clearly not everyone got the memo though as a large crowd still set off at the original time. As someone commented, people getting spread out a bit might not have been the worst thing as it should make the experience a bit less laggy. I set off at the new start time with a still pretty sizeable crowd, though we got more and more spread out over time. By the Plaguelands the trail of runners was spread thin enough that I was largely running by myself again, though I could still see more runners behind and ahead of me this time.
On my first run I'd simply followed the road to new Silvermoon, but this time around I learned that the event was inclusive to people who didn't have the expansion and that you could also go through the portal to old Quel'Thalas and finish the race there. Instructions from the organisers were to go through that portal, so I opted for the alternative route this time. I was happy when I reached the goal in Silvermoon, where it was properly crowded again and people were partying. All in all, a really fun and wholesome experience.
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