Breakfast Topic: Do you miss world invasions?

Last night’s Blizzard Watch podcast had some interesting discussion about world events, and it reminded me of something I’d completely forgotten about — the elemental invasions. No, not the ones we experienced just before Cataclysm roared into existence, I’m talking about the old world elemental invasions that were added back in patch 1.4.0. With these particular invasions, portals would occasionally pop up in one of four world locations at random times throughout the week, and elementals would overrun the area. Eventually, the “boss” would spawn: a particularly tough elite that packed way too much of a punch to successfully solo, back in the day.  You could farm the elementals for various essences that were required for crafting, or you could kill the leader — but once you killed the leader, the elementals would no longer spawn. In some cases, you wanted to leave the leader alone, and just farm the endlessly spawning elementals over getting whatever loot the  elite happened to be carrying.

And the loot was pretty good, for the time.  Each of them had a chance to drop the elusive Ace of Elementals required to complete the original Darkmoon decks. But once I was reminded of these events it wasn’t really the loot I remembered fondly, it was the number of times my friends and I hauled our butts out to the middle of nowhere to try and kill those elites. Sometimes we were successful, sometimes we fell flat on our faces, but we always had a good time trying, anyway. And I kind of find myself missing that sort of content, because I don’t think I’ve seen anything like it in quite some time. There weren’t any quests involved, it was purely going out and killing things for the sake of going out and killing things, because they happened to be yelling loudly in an out of the way zone and being a general nuisance.

I wouldn’t mind seeing these kinds of events making a return — world invasions, featuring enemies that randomly spawn and keep spawning until a leader is defeated. Maybe the leader could be a world raid boss, or maybe it’s just an elite with a pretty good selection of loot. Do you guys remember the old elemental invasions? Or maybe you recall the invasions that happened when Ahn’Qiraj’s gates were opened, or when the Scourge invaded just before Wrath? Do you miss these old world invasions, too? If they popped up again, is it something you’d be interested in playing, or is it something you’d rather pass on?