Azeroth holidays need more stuff to kill

There are things I like about in-game Azeroth holidays in WoW, and things I don’t like. Noblegarden’s a prime example – I think the idea of a kind of Easter analogue in WoW is fine, and I’m okay with stuff like eggs with nice stuff inside them. But then there’s the ears thing – why is Shake Your Bunny Maker restricted to female characters? It’s just not my thing. I mean, it’s less onerous than School of Hard Knocks I guess (I have some bad memories of trying to help my wife get that achievement) but I just find the idea of running around Azeroth harassing random women (or just people playing as women) to be strange and disquieting.

I can heard someone accusing me of hating fun even as I type this, and its true. I hate fun. From my black basalt throne, I drink a goblet of pain and despair and my ebon wings unfold, blotting out the sun as I plot the destruction of fun. That’s why I play video games, my ceaseless and unabated hatred of fun. I mean, I suppose it’s possible I just find some things less fun than others. Never mind that bit about a black basalt throne.

I generally enjoy holiday stuff when it is either completely extraneous to my life or can easily be incorporated into stuff I was going to do anyway, like run a dungeon or do some PvP or what have you. I hate holidays that impose a different element (again, School of Hard Knocks) or otherwise make me feel like the holiday is forcing itself on me, and I dislike stuff like Shake Your Bunny Maker because it feels, well, outdated. It’s the kind of thing my grandfather might have laughed at. Yes, I get the Playboy reference, thanks.

For me, the various holiday bosses work very well – they drop stuff like cosmetic gear and mounts and pets, you can queue for them like a dungeon. I liked them better when they could be chained until you got what you wanted – I guess I’m just old school that way, I liked running the Headless Horseman while people chained in alts until people got the various items they wanted off of him, and find the current loot bag once a day system less compelling. I waited four years for the Brewfest mount to drop, and it felt somewhat punitive. But overall I enjoy bosses more than achievements – put in a giant rabbit we had to kill for Noblegarden and, well, I wouldn’t do it because I had two rabbit pets and I think rabbits are awesome and don’t want to kill any. But I’d think it was a more interesting thing to do than to run around putting ears on random players because they’re playing level 18 and up women characters.

Ooh, make the new Noblegarden boss a weird monster with an obsession for putting ears on people. Now we can all enjoy killing it.

This is why I tend to like Love is in the Air more – it’s completely optional to me, I can ignore the heck out of it if I choose, or go wreck a dude’s face for a chance at some loot. This is the same reason I like the Midsummer Fire Festival – it has a lot of cool stuff you can do if you want to (there’s a nice rep buff you can get, for instance) or it’s all easily ignorable, if you want to queue for Ahune and get on with your life. In real life, we’re often inundated with media telling us about various holidays, especially the commercialized ones. It’s nice to be able to ignore a holiday, or get out of it as much as you want to put in and get on with gameplay. Anything that detracts from that, be it a creepy achievement or having to witness a loved one go nearly insane trying to get an orphan through a battleground, shouldn’t be part of the process.