BlizzCon 2016: What we know about 7.1.5’s Micro Holidays

If you’re like me you noticed the Micro-Holidays during the Legion — What’s Next panel. If you’re not like me, you may have anyway. We’re not all the same. But this is still a pretty interesting little feature being added to the game in patch 7.1.5.

If you want an example of something like a Micro-Holiday currently in the game, I’d say the Day of the Dead or Talk like a Pirate Day are pretty close. They’re both fairly short, have minimal impact (no gear, maybe an occasional pet or cosmetic item), and are more there to be fun things to do than to increase character power in any way.

During the panel, Ion Hazzikostas mentioned these particular examples of Micro-Holidays — moments that the people of Azeroth might celebrate that aren’t linked necessarily to seasons or what have you. Anh’Qiraj Remembrance Day would basically be hearkening back to the original Gates of Ahn’Qiraj event, and once a year on that day players could flock to Silithus to take part in activities much akin to the ones we used to unlock said gates — gathering cloth, farming bug parts — and at the end the faction that did the most of that would win the right to fly their faction banner over AQ for a year.

That’s it.

No mounts, no pets, no currency or gear, just bragging rights for a year.

That’s just one example, but I think it helps to sum up how the Micro-Holidays work. Here are the other Micro-Holidays Hazzikostas mentioned:

• Boat Day is even more basic — Go to Thousand Needles and ride around on a boat. That’s it. It’s just meant to be a nice day out with friends. It’s purely stuff to do in game, a way to re-inject some of Azeroth’s feeling of being a place where things happen outside of constant end of the world attacks from the Scourge, the Legion, the Twilight’s Hammer or what have you.
• Volunteer Guard Day is exactly what it sounds like — you get to become a guard and patrol your faction cities.
• Hatching of the Hippogryphs gets you a Pepe style baby hippogryph to ride around on your head and be in all your selfies.

The focus is on fun diversions here, not collections or power ups. These are the ones that were mentioned at BlizzCon, but we’ll be on the lookout for more news on them. Man, I can’t wait for this year’s Boat Day.