I've been leveling up fishing lately (hit 373 last night, along with 375 cooking, thanks to El's great guide), and I've actually found it pretty fun. It's a little too boring to do it without something going on in the background (last night it was the Cubs game, as depressing as that was), but it's kind of fun just to throw a line into some random water or pool and see what comes out. That said, the rewards could use a little tuning -- while events like the STV Fishing Tourney are fun (I've done it twice now and haven't won it yet) and offer some nice items, fishing itself even at the highest levels just isn't as rewarding as, say, running dailies or Heroics. The only reason to run it all the way up is really just to say you did -- while there's a promise of a Mr. Pinchy somewhere out there, there's no real fishing endgame in the way that there is for the rest of the game.

Which makes Qann's suggestion intriguing -- he says that high level fishers should have access to certain areas via boat that offer them tougher fishing challenges, and better rewards for it. A boat could shuttle you out to a remote island or location, where only certain fish could be caught or found. And we don't even really need a boat -- just more events like the STV Extravaganza (where certain fish that appear in special pools can be turned in directly for items) would be great. And why is it that the best items obtained through fishing are apparently scrolls? Why can't we fish for Badges, or even have a fishmarket, where fish can be exchanged for gems, crafting materials or other rewards?

Even Blizzard admits that there's a lot of work to be done for fishing, but it doesn't seem too hard -- if they're giving out epics for holidays, fishermen and women who make it up to 375 should deserve some good loot for their hard work as well, whether it's through Deep Sea fishing, keys that will unlock special chests, or just a vendor that will take all of those Barbed Gill Trout off your hands and give you something worthwhile in return.

Just a friendly reminder for everyone: Today is the last day of the Harvest Festival, the annual event honoring the fallen heroes of the Horde and the Alliance. That means you have one more day to head to the front entrance of Ironforge and Orgrimmar to hang with some ghosts, buy some cheap fireworks (those Midsummer Ground Flowers are awesome, and I am totally stocking up), and go pay your respects to Grom or Uther.

Yeah, it's a small holiday, and a weird one at that. I mean, you either honor Uther, who was a jerk to Tirion Fordring, ineffective against the Scourge and was betrayed and killed by his protege, or Grom, who betrayed the Orcish race to the Burning Legion at least twice, and whose clan is still one of the major sources of strife and bad Horde-Alliance relations on Azeroth today.

And what about hanging out with all those ghosts? I mean, isn't anyone concerned that they could be scourge? And what about those Forsaken ancestors? Shouldn't they look like humans as ghosts, since they were humans in the first place? And wouldn't a good portion of those Orc and Troll ancestors come from the tradition of savagery and cannibalism and demon worship that the Horde is supposedly trying to break free from?

Oh well, at least it's free fireworks and free food. Enjoy it while you can! Brewfest is a scant week away too, so be sure to review the new Coren Direbrew loot and plan your trip to the Grim Guzzler now.

When I read through the forums, I see numerous threads lamenting over the lack of world PvP. The Burning Crusade added a handful of PvP objectives that often go unnoticed and the towers in the Eastern Plaguelands seem pretty lonely since everyone moved on to Outland. Since the beginning of the Midsummer Fire Festival I've seen at least a temporary resurgence in actual PvP. Of course the ganking is still going on, but I've seen many more fair fights.

The way it works is you try to keep your own fires burning while putting the flames of your opponents out. I've seen numerous mini raids on major cities and massive skirmishes near the small-town fires. Like many players, I've got to give props to Blizzard for adding this mechanic to the festival. The buffs are pretty awesome too.

I've enjoyed this celebration more than any WoW holiday in the past. Have you been joining in the desecrating fun?

Remember to check out the "It Came From the Blog" event this Sunday, June 29 at 7Pm Eastern.

Happy Father's Day, to all of you fathers out there!* If you and yours aren't the type to go out and about on a day like this, never fear. For the family that games together, I Heart Chaos has 8 great ideas for an Azerothian Father's Day. A few other things that come to mind for Dad's special day:

1. Roll a new alt with your pops, maybe crossing your primary faction lines. Sometimes leveling together is more meaningful than twinking an alt.
   
2. Talk your guild into having a Father's Day raid night! Take your dad to Karazhan or Zul'Aman, assuming he isn't further progressed than you are. Hey, don't give me that look. My raid has Dads in some pretty phat purps. Yes, I did just say 'phat'. And 'purps'. Don't judge me!
   
3. Fill his mailbox with delicious cake.

Do any of you have Father's Day plans in Azeroth, or any Father's Day plans at all?

*Sorry if I missed any of you!

Tipster Graffias pointed out an exciting find in the latest leaked Alpha files for WoTLK: An Icon for a Brewfest Kodo. You may recall that last year's Brewfest included a Ram mount that was purchasable with tickets by both sides, allowing the Horde very easy access to an Alliance mount with a few days of grinding for Brewfest Prize Tickets. Many Alliance weren't happy with this, annoyed that the Horde got such easy access to an Alliance mount without having to kill Baron Rivendare or a Troll a couple hundred times. Bornakk decided that the best way to answer this criticism would be by promising the Alliance that the Horde would be getting access to yet another previously alliance-only mount skin in the Cenarion War Hippogryph. Of course, Kisirani, being as awesome as she is, later said that we should have patience and things would work out in the end.

Listening to the words of the world designer seem to have paid off, as it looks like the Dwarves are going to turn the tables on the Goblins this year and steal some Kodos from them. I can finally fulfill my dream of owning my very own Kodo. My Night Elf Druid is from Kalimdor after all, and you would think there would be some Night Elves who decided to domesticate Kodos as beasts of burden too.

But really, as much as I am looking forward to grabbing myself a Kodo (and seeing a tiny Gnome riding around on a huge beast of burden), what's really exciting is this thought: If the Brewfest is in late September to early October, does that mean Blizzard is planning to give us WoTLK by September, Brewfest Kodo and all?

With The Burning Crusade, Children's Week was given a new tier of quests, based in Outland. Either this year or the last, I'm sure most of you have done these quests. Rather than replacing the old ones, it was simply an addition to the holiday.

If Children's Week receives the same treatment in Wrath, I'm itching to see what the rewards will be, or who(what?) we'll be escorting. The rewards in TBC were based off of the new content, so I have my doubts we'll have any accurate guesses for Wrath's installment at this point, but wrong guesses are still fun to make. Penguins? Walruses? Baby Bornakks?

And what will we be escorting? A baby Tuskarr? A baby Nerubian? Who knows! Like I said, I doubt we can make any accurate guesses at this point in Wrath's development, but it's still fun to think about.

World Designer Kisirani has just announced that the Midsummer Fire Festival is now active on the PTR. While the Lunar Festival and Love is in the Air Events have mostly been about the same (aside from the occasional love rocket), it looks like the fire festival got some major additions this year, and they've activated the festival on the PTR a few months early so that they can be previewed and tested. New quests and a seasonal boss not unlike the Headless Horseman in the Slave Pens of Coilfang Reservoir will be awaiting us this summer. There is also a new quest chain that in part has you disguising yourself as a crab in order to spy on Twilight Cultists for the Earthen Ring, which sounds like enough fun in and of itself. The all levels quests have gotten a slight revamp as well. The quests to visit various smaller fires are gone, replaced by a quest to visit just one of the smaller fires. As well, there's now some torch tossing and catching games to play.

In addition, the Burning Blossoms that once mostly took up space in your inventory (since you could only use so many for that buff) will now be useful for buying things at various Midsummer Suppliers, including a rather intriguing looking dress and pair of boots that promise to "add fire to your dance moves" when used, a brazier that looks like it may create that Firedancer Draenei we've seen from patch mining expeditions, some Midsummer Ground Flower fireworks, and a Bag of Smorc Supplies for making your own Toasted Smorcs.

It sounds like this summer is going to be pretty hot indeed, and it's great to finally see some long awaited world event changes showing up.

Our hearts may return to their regularly scheduled descent into blackness, Azeroth is leaving Valentine's Day behind today. At least, that's what the calendar says.

I hope everyone received all they had hoped for in WoW during this event, or you're in for a mighty long wait to try again. I personally received a number of scandalous dresses and fancy baskets over the course of the last few days. I don't have much to complain about this time around, except for the fact that it is always a little disappointing when one of Azeroth's many holidays comes to a close.

Even if the Valentine's Day holiday is quite fun in WoW, I still have a habit of wondering what could have been done better for any given event. I think it would have been great if voting for your favorite faction leader actually worked, and had some sort of effect. For example, if Tyrande winning for the day gave those that voted for her a buff. "Tyrande's Thanks" or "Sylvanas' Satisfaction" or somesuch. Even if it didn't do anything, having the buff would be really fun. Of course, I'm a big supporter of spells having extra sparkles just for the sake of having sparkles, so maybe only I would be interested in that. After all, Prayer of Mending turning into a laser gun kept me from quitting my priest early on in The Burning Crusade.

With so much to look forward to in patch 2.4 and WotLK, Arcane Brilliance would like to take one last look back at the road behind, mostly to see if there's a Rogue back there waiting to stab us. It's a little late, perhaps, but here's a look at the year that was, from a Mage's perspective.

2007 was a splendid year. Someday, when our children's children are grown, we will bore them with stories of 2007, and perhaps refer to it as "back in the day," or "the year I dinged 70," or "the year I learned never to mix chili with microwavable burritos in the hopes that their powers will combine to form 'Chilitos,' the perfect food." Here at Arcane Brilliance, we like to think of it as the "Year of the Mage." We also like to think of 2006 as the "Year of the Mage," and frankly we think of 1902 the same way, so take that in whatever way you wish. Basically we like Mages here, and 2007 was a fun year for those well-versed in wizardry. Not everything was magelicious, though. The highlights--and lowlights--after the jump.

Many of us will be forgoing our Azeroth adventures in favor of spending time with the objects of our affections. Some couples will share special in-game moments with their significant others. May I suggest a Bouquet of Red Roses and some Delicious Chocolate Cake for your sweetheart? We would love to hear your stories of love and romance in WoW.

Zom over on the forums asks: what's your favorite WoW holiday? And the response is extra special because it's by Kisirani, who, you may know, is actually Blizzard's World Event Designer-- him showing up in your thread about holidays is kind of like God showing up on a thread about your favorite mountain range.

Kisirani asks specifically for constructive, reasoned posts, but c'mon, he's asking on the WoW forums. Fortunately, this site is not the WoW forums, and our comments are more than capable of giving constructive and reasoned.. well...

I kid! Tell the guy what your favorite WoW holiday is, whether it be the free epics of Hallow's End or the ticket grinding of Brewfest, and maybe the upcoming updates to Nobelgarden (we hope) will incorporate some of your constructive and well-reasoned ideas!

Thanks, Joshua!

Here's a little something to brighten up your Monday. Sharp-eyed tipster Aikiwoce spotted this dead ringer for a certain object that rhymes with "freighted D'Artagnan noob" outside the Stormwind gates, presumably as part of the "Love Is in the Air" holiday that kicked off today. I love Blizzard and their cultural references. Has anyone else seen something interesting?


SInce we're on the subject of real world references in WoW, check out this gallery of curiously familiar names of NPC's in game.

Also, players dressed as their favorite WoW characters at last year's Blizzcon.

And how can we forget people dressed up as their favorite characters from their favorite book/movie/tv series/game at last year's DragonCon.

It's the first full week of the month, and among other things, that means that the Darkmoon Faire is in town -- That town being Shattrath City, at least for February. We've said a few things about the Faire in the past, but I'd like to get into the meat of the thing, so you can figure out how to get all you can out of Silas and his merry band before they head out for another month, or at least start your preparations for their next gig in Elwynn Forest. This time, I'd like to talk about the ticket system, that lovely process whereby Gelvas Grimegate turns Darkmoon Faire Prize Tickets into loot. Fellow blogger Robin Torres posted a good introduction to the system a few months back, but I'd like to expand it a bit and see what we can find out about how it works and why -- or if -- you should take advantage of it.

Check it out after the jump!

Blizzard has previously told us that they plan to renovate as many of the holidays as possible, but from what we've seen so far, the Lunar Festival hasn't really recieved any of that love-- as Lodran says, players who've done the Lunar Festival quests in the pasts aren't finding anything new to do this year.

Not that there's anything really wrong with that-- Omen is still out there to be taken down, and for a lot of people, Omen was the first raid boss they'd seen (in fact, he was the Horseman before there was a Horseman-- a seasonal boss, except that Omen didn't drop epic loot). And lots of people are still having fun running the old Lunar Festival quests and turning those in.

But it is too bad there's nothing new yet. Guess we'll have to wait for Love is in the Air and Noblegarden to see if Blizzard's done any more seasonal updating.

Okinos does a little trolling on the forums about holidays supposedly being boring (when actually, with the exception of no new content for Winter's Veil, they have been anything but), but at least something good did come out of the thread: not only does Drysc lay down a huge burn, but we're rewarded with a visit from Kisirani, part of Blizzard's world events team.

And she's got great news for those who love holidays-- all of the holiday events are scheduled to get a makeover, Hallow's End style. Darkmoon Faire is getting beefed up, as is "an older holiday" that is getting "a significant amount of punch" added to it. Chinese New Year, aka the Lunar Festival? Valentine's Day? Your guess is as good as ours.

Blizzard's team has to take time off, too, so it's not too surprising that there wasn't too much new content to go through this year (although the Clockwork Bots definitely make up for it, if only they'd work right). But it's definitely awesome to hear that there's more in store for holiday events around the realms.