What are your favorite new additions to Brewfest this year?

It’s the most wonderful time of the year in the World of Warcraft — Brewfest! This year we were promised a patch 10.1.7 “holiday refresh” in the schedule, and for Brewfest that means a couple new activities centered in Valdrakken, a few new items to acquire, and new armor for your Dragonriding mount. While some might think that there wasn’t enough added to the holiday, as someone who already thoroughly enjoyed the existing festivities, I never felt it needed a top-to-bottom revamp.

The highlight are the new daily quests in Valdrakken: barrel riding and bubble popping. Of the two I’m a big fan of barrel rolling; similar to the quest on the Broken Shore in Legion, your character tries to navigate a barrel from the Ruby Feast down to the Barber Shop while avoiding crashed kegs and other hazards. It’s a little goofy but it’s fun. The bubble popping one is less interesting, unfortunately, as the ability to do it while mounted makes it too easy to complete — but still worth doing for the Brewfest Tokens, though, if you need them. The only real issue I have with these activities is the lack of a dedicated space in Valdrakken for Brewfest — it would’ve been nice to have a celebration area like those outside Ironforge and Orgrimmar.

The new items are pretty neat too. The first is the Orange Brewfest Bulwark shield, with shares the same appearance as the Homebrewer’s Sampling Crest cloak from this month’s Trading Post. There is also a new toy, the Brew Barrel which lets you reenact the joys of the barrel riding daily for 30 seconds every 30 minutes (sadly you can’t travel via barrel everywhere if you want). Both of these items are 200 Brewfest Tokens apiece, which is a relatively easy amount to acquire especially if you have alts as the new achievement A Round on the House can direct you to 12 “bar tab barrels” across various inns in the Dragon Isles, netting you 120 Tokens per character with minimal effort especially if you already have the necessary flight points.

When they first announced the holiday refreshes I was a tad concerned we’d be losing events such as Ram Racing and Down with the Dark Iron Hozen/Elementals or that the Coren Direbrew fight would get a makeover like the Headless Horseman is scheduled to receive. Instead by giving us new alternatives to Token farming it made sure not to disappoint those who love the old events.

So what do you think? Do you think the development team has done enough to justify calling this a refresh, or would you have liked to see more? Would you have been ok with the removal of old activities? Have you tried the new activities in Valdrakken? And have you had any luck getting the Brewfest Armor?