The Midsummer Fire Festival - Will We See It Again This Year?
Warning: Opinions are expressed below. If this isn't something you're looking for, why not check out some decks!
Last year, the Midsummer Fire Festival event Ragnaros brought to us gave us some amazing content, but will we get to see it again this year? We don't currently have an indication that tells us we're going to see Ragnaros come back with double gold for completing quests, but it would certainly be a great followup to the current Taverns of Time event.
Let's take a look at the Midsummer Festival's history and if it makes sense to see it again.
Humble Beginnings: World of Warcraft's Midsummer Fire Festival
In World of Warcraft, the Midsummer Fire Festival is a holiday that takes place during the end of June and beginning of July.
The event is based on the real-world holiday of Midsummer, a celebration that takes place in many different parts of the world in their own special ways. Residents of the Warcraft universe enjoy visiting bonfires, melting frost elementals (ice stones too!), ribbon dancing, and tossing flaming torches during the in-game event which comes loaded with plenty of swag to collect. Players collect Burning Blossoms that they can redeem for toys, pets, and miscellaneous fun.
This image is from 2007. There's Hearthstone players younger than that!
Unlike in WoW, Hearthstone took the flavor of the event and let Ragnaros decide how to run it.
BY FIRE BE PURGED: Hearthstone's Take on Midsummer
Ragnaros took over the Tavern for a couple of weeks last July with a bunch of awesome.
- A special Tavern Brawl.
- Double gold earned on all daily quests.
- Special firework animations for your wow emote, based on how well you did in the brawl.
Objectively, it still remains one of the best events Hearthstone has ever had and it lead to a wonderful holiday called the Frost Festival which had tie-ins to the Knights of the Frozen Throne expansion. Why would the Fire Festival be a good follow-up event for the Taverns of Time though? That's the question we need to answer!
A Timely Follow-up
Blizzard is no stranger to reusing events in Hearthstone, with the player base expecting it, but are they generous enough to keep that gold flowing? Looking specifically at dates, the Midsummer festival of last year took place on July 5th, which is around the same time the Taverns of Time ends (July 2). Going from one event into another would continue to keep Hearthstone spicy and still falls in line with the historical record which has allowed for back-to-back events. Totally possible then!
Honestly, I think they are generous enough to give us that sweet gold. There has been quite a bit of negativity within the community when it comes to how hard it is to get into Hearthstone, so giving out extra goodies to everyone improves morale and may even bring us some new players in the long run. That could just be the shard of optimism of optimism within me talking, but many studios out there these days are always doing new, scheduled content in their titles which makes for quite a competitive scene -- something Hearthstone should desire to be in front of.
It would also just be nice to see some holidays that we can rely on. If there were always a couple of scheduled events between expansions, it would go a long way to reducing that mid-set fatigue many players talk about. This is especially true should the meta not swing much around that point and the team over at Blizzard HQ doesn't have any balance changes to make. Gold injection events would help us prepare for the upcoming set, or finish up the last few packs we want from the current one to complete that pity timer run.
If we don't end up seeing Midsummer come back though, I fully expect something this summer to tie into whatever that new Tempest Keep / Ethereal expansion ends up being, so don't frown! As Dean Ayala said last year, they now have a dedicated team that works on events and they have a "bunch of other things in store for the future [we] will all enjoy" so there's likely still new things in the pipeline for us to enjoy.
The Frost Festival on the other hand, at least for now, may not make much sense to return. We've already had a recent arena event with the Taverns of Time so it may be too soon to shake up the Arena again. There's also not much of a reason to give out Frozen Throne packs again which was a large part of the Frost Festival tie-in to the Frozen Throne set, so that may be the final nail in the coffin - at least for now.
Overall, more new events for the game are welcomed, seeing old events return so we can have some familiarity and rewards is awesome, and having content spread out throughout the entire year and not just limited to sets is a huge win for the game in my book. Midsummer makes a ton of sense to return to the game to have a dual-event summer happy-fun-time and to once again shoot those fireworks off your emotes.
What About You?
Do you think Midsummer will return? Do you want Midsummer to return? What other kinds of events would you like to see in Hearthstone? Let us know how you feel in the comments below!
I doubt they will do it. Last year, the Frost festival was worth about 800g to players and the Fire Festival another 800g. This year the Tavern of Time is worth about 1600 dust + 700g (1000g if you cheese free arena tickets), which is already more generous than both festivals combined.
No it isn't, quit the circlejerking already. If you started playing just 3 weeks ago, did your quests and played a decent amount, at this point you would have easily enough gold, packs and dust to build some decent budget decks that could get you to rank 5.
I hope so, I had a few of the 100g quests so they were doubled to 200g, easiest gold I ever made. If it isn't the same Midsummer Fire Festival, I am guessing they will do something. All of the recent releases have had lead up events that gave you free packs of the new expansion. I don't see them stopping that.
"Honestly, I think they are generous enough to give us that sweet gold."
They are not "generous enough", Blizzard is a company not the Caritas, they have to, it is different. They have to because this expansion is very bad and people are bored and we are leaving the game. When your product is low quality you have to give free stuffs in order to keep your clients, if your product is good you will not give any free stuffs because people will buy it.
The HS business is built on giving free stuff to attract new players some of which will spend real money. If they don't give free stuff the game dies. If they give too much no one has to spend money. They have to find the balance.
"Objectively, it still remains one of the best events Hearthstone has ever had"
Was it? How can it be proven to be objective? Sounds more like you mean subjectively. It was really nice and all, but I would say the current event is quite a bit better. I find the new arena cards way more interesting to the Rag brawl I played once and I slightly prefer receiving dust to gold.
The spicy link leads to an article whose headline is a quote from Ben Brode. Thanks, now I'm sad again.
*Ben Brode laughs*
My guess is, we have this year's "Fire Festival" right now. In other words: The Toki-event replaces the Fire Festival, and probably the Frost Festival as well.
I don't think Blizzard wanted to establish some sort of Hearthstone calendar comparable to WoW with specific holidays and annual events, aside perhaps from the Gift Exchange Brawl. They come up with events here and there to mix things up, but Hearthstone is far from an in-game universe, where these events follow a specific schedule or have some sort of consistency.
The Fire Festival and the Frost Festival made the game more attractive for a short time and helped promoting Knights of the Frozen Thrones. The Toki-event is meant to do the same, just with a different flavour.
I anticipate, that the next expansion will either be teased or announced the same week the Toki-event ends. Maybe Blizzard follows up with another promotional event besides the usual pre-order deal, but I would not count on it.
That double gold event was pretty sweet. And right before a new expansion too! Hope we'll see it again
when is the next expansion come out?
x2 Gold, Blizzard :BlessRNG:
Enjoyable read, thanks. I personally wouldn't be surprised if things went quiet on the event from for a while, given how long Taverns of Time has run for (and how generous it has been!). Would be nice to be proved wrong though ;)
Agreed, I hope to be wrong but I don't really see Blizzard giving away more gold or dust in another event just following Taverns of Time.
I hope everyone who thinks the notion we're getting "too much" from Blizzard should read this, cause the ignorance on this issue has to end.
Aren't those 2 notions different though? Your notion is that we don't receive enough from blizzard, but what you quoted, the notion is that Blizzard won't care because the profit is gained during the first week of release.
Idk, we already have the Arena time event.
Probably not considering current one is giving a lot of gold/dust. I think they won’t do it because we would get ‘too much’ easy gold for new expansion.
To me fair, that was a nice treat to be able to get double gold on quests during that time, as well as having a tavern brawl which not only just fun but also a brawl which had the unlocks for the fireworks when you destroyed more minions in those games. And even if this wasn't going to happen again, I have also this year's Taverns of Time event, both again the reward system as well as the tavern brawl that was with it.
However I would like to see this again. Though when it comes to the events I would suggest a few things. Firstly, as mentioned in the article, I would like fixed events, so that when it comes a certain time of the year you would except a certain event to take place.
Secondly, what I like about the fire festival was that when you played more of the tavern brawl, you got a temporary emote reward. Now I'm not saying we need more emote rewards, however that said I would like to see unique rewards for playing during those events, but also permanent rewards. So if you get an achievement like destroy X minions or play X elementals etc, you could get more something like a card back, a new design border design for your hero portraits or even an alternative picture for your hero or certain basic cards. Something that rewards you for playing during that time and not just because you wanted extra gold/dust/card packs.
Would I love it? Yes.
Would I expect it fairly shortly after a high gold AND dust rewards special event? No.