Midsummer questions

[Boven]

Having completed all the achievements on my hunter long ago, I mostly only do the Midsummer stuff on my other characters for the toys n gold. I'll get the cooking hat on one of my alts this year since I really don't need more silly stuff cluttering up my hunter's bank/void storage.

Anyway, I noticed a couple things this year that have me wondering. The first is a question directed at folks who've been doing the capitol city fires on both Alliance and Horde characters: Do you find that the Alliance fires are any more difficult to steal than the Horde fires?

In the past, they've not been particularly tough. The hardest part was getting into the cities and the almost inevitable gankers waiting to try to keep you from stealing the flames. For the most part, old world flying has made getting to the fires fairly easy (IF and Exodar and presumably Silvermoon being the exceptions). The really pain in the butt one for me this year, though has been Ironforge. With an IF guard standing one one side of the fire and another patrolling past it, it's tough enough. The third flying guard can make it a royal PITA. Granted, the first time I tried it was on my 84 shaman, so I thought perhaps her aggro radius was just larger. Even on the two 85's I did it with subsequently, though, there was only one small area where I could tag the fire without the stationary IF guard aggro'ing on me.

I only have high level Horde characters, so I can't check on the difficulty of the Horde fires. I can imagine Silvermoon's would be a big pain, but, aside from one bluffwatcher in Thunder Bluff who patrols close enough to aggro, the Horde fires seem a little easier to steal. I'm just curious as to what those who've done it on both factions think.

The second question is with the torch catching daily. I've never really had problems with it in the past. Sure, there'd be the odd day where I just couldn't seem to get under the torch, but usually the daily has been easy as pie. This is the first year I've done it on non-Tauren/Orc characters though. I seem to have a lot of trouble with it on my Goblin characters. I kinda wonder if the hit box plays a part in successful catches. If so, I imagine it'd be tougher on Gnomes than on, say, Draenei.

I'm not complaining about the fires or the daily (though the torch thing is frustrating and I hate to admit it's just me doin lousy at it). I'm just curious and wondered what others have observed.

[Kalliope]

Having done both sets of fires on 85s this year, I can only say that the guards seemed touchier around the alliance fires. When I was snagging horde fires, I only had a problem with Silvermoon, which was buried deeply in a no-fly city. That journey was longer than the Exodar equivalent. And yet, my level 84 char was able to get the Exodar guards to reset, as opposed to my 85 in Silvermoon (but then again, I could have gotten unlucky with forced dismounting).

But.

The guards in Stormwind seemed twitchier. Flying into and out of Ironforge got me shot at on both horde chars (and dismounted on my 84, though there was no fatality there due to the convenient placement of the tram); no such trouble with Undercity, since that fire is outside.

Hit box might be different with smaller chars, due to them being shorter. I mostly have trouble with chars that lack speed boosts, because then running accurately becomes more important.

[Yoruko]

The first is a question directed at folks who've been doing the capitol city fires on both Alliance and Horde characters: Do you find that the Alliance fires are any more difficult to steal than the Horde fires?

For me, this is pretty much a realm based problem rather than anything else. My realm, at the moment, is very alliance heavy and while most of my characters are on alliance side, my horde shammy has constant trouble with things such as these. Killing the King of Stormwind is next to impossible on my realm and he remains the only leader that I need for the mount achievement on my shammy. We had a 50 people raid trying to down Varian (basically all 85 horde players on at the time) and yet the server is so full to brim of alliance that they can simply swarm us to death with ease as soon as we land our flying mounts.

The same goes for trying to complete objectives anywhere near Stormwind and sometimes Ironforge. There's always loads of alliance players outside SW. This has somewhat caused "alliance easymode" attitude for horde players on my server. I've never had any trouble completing achievement objectives on my alliance characters because usually there's little to none horde players around and even if there are I can usually sneak my way around the few. If I have to fight guards I usually don't get disturbed by players either. (Not to mention that once I started actively playing my shammy I befriended most of the few active PVP hordies anyway, so they can see on Real ID that it's me on an alt messing around their doorstep. )

So yeah, I have noticed some differences in difficulty but I blame them on imbalance of faction player amounts on my realm.

[Boven]

Yeah. There will always be people in both factions that will take the achievements as an opportunity to try to get a few more HK's. I frown on that, myself, especially when people blue-flag for it. I tend to cheer Alliance players when they're just after the fires. Now if they start going after NPC's or causing other mayhem, I'll join in. I was wondering about how folks felt the fires compared sans gankers, though.

As for twitchy npc's, I did have the festival NPC's attack my shaman in Stormwind the first time I tried to get the fire. I dunno why. I made sure not to have lightning shield up or anything like that. Just flew in and they attacked before I could even click the fire. Same thing happened on one my first attempt by that character in IF. I don't think I did anything unusual. It didn't happen to my level 85 priest or rogue though.

[Kalliope]

Oh, right, I didn't mention that my runs took place on different servers. The alliance one is mostly dead, while the horde one is a bit more populated. I had zero trouble with horde in the former case and only once in the latter case (between two chars).

Now that I'm thinking harder, I don't believe my 85 horde had any trouble in SW.

[GormanGhaste]

I've always had trouble with the torch-catching daily

[Equeon]

Silvermoon / Exodar (I guess) actually isn't bad at all. When I did that one, it was relatively early in the morning (about 7:00 realm time) and there were only 1 or 2 players in Silvermoon, and they didn't see me. The guards were no trouble at all, so I basically just rode in and rode out, slaughtering patrols along the way.

[Finduilas]

I did the achievments on most of my toons last year or the year before, so this year I only went with one hunter. She's horde and I rarely play alliance, so I can only talk about the horde point of view. The alliance fires in the questing areas were all easy to get with flying now. I had some problems in the capitals. I went for Ironforge first, flying in was easy, I didn't get aggro until I landed right in front of the fire. Two guards attacked me + a rogue and a warrior. Needless to say I died pretty fast although I had my pvp gear on. I was lucky I had snagged the flame before everyone had attacked me, so I took rezzsickness and went on to Stormwind. The german servers I play one all are more alliance populated, I flew into Stormwind with tons of players around the fire. I let myself drop from the sky got my flame and was killed very fast by the players and one guard. I died near the canal, so I ran back in as ghost and rezzed myself in the canal and hearthstoned home. Darnassus was easy. I flew in through the magic gate and up directly after arriving to leave the ground guards behind. Then to the flame, land, take, mount back up and same way out. There were no guards disturbing me and luckily no players either. Worst thing for me was Exodar. I took a mount and rode in, I got dismounted and started killing the guard. Other guards came and I had 4 around me, when I had killed one they instant respawned so I wouldn't ever get out of the fight. I died several times just because of the constant respawning guards. It was a pain to even get to the damn flame. I never had this happen before in a capital but I tried again later the day and the stupid exodar guards kept on spawning and spawning and killing me. With corpserezzing and deterrence I could get the flame, but I had over 80 gold repcosts.

I think the horde flames are far easier to get, because you never have to truly enter the capital except in silvermoon (but this has to make up for stupid Exodar!). In Orgrimmar you land next to our portals with not a single guard around, Thunderbluff only one guard that stays dead when killed and in Undercity it's not even IN the city but in the frontyard.

To the torch-catching: try it out doing it in Thunderbluff. I think it's easier there, the ways you have to run to catch it again are much shorter and I think you can see the shadows better on the grass then on the sandy rocks in Org. I had quite some trouble in Org but I managed to do it on the first try in Thunderbluff. And I agree with you, my smaller toons (bloodelfs) have a harder time catching it then my tauren or orcs.

[Boven]

I haven't had any problem with the non-capitol fires. I did have a level 37 mage eyeing my 85 hunter in Desolace when I was snagging a few last night while waiting for my raid to start. He decided to not try anything, though.

I try not to cause any trouble on any of the chars when doing the fires. I kinda see it as a harmless prank kind of thing. Kinda like TP'ing the trees in front of Varian Wrynn's house or something. I don't bother anyone going after the Horde fires unless they start causing trouble.

I did have a level 9 warrior attack my 85 priest outside Darnassus the other day. On the way out of the city I didn't notice a flying patrol and got dismounted, so I had to run a ways to deaggro the ground guards I landed near. When I was clear and healing myself, the lil level 9 charged in. I didn't want to hurt him so I feared him. He came back, so I ended up just Mind Controlling him and running him off a ways into a river. Finally out of combat, I mounted and flew off.

[Boven]

On an only-slightly-related note, I saw Miacoda end up in Fyr Mistrunner's tent in Thunder Bluff last night while I was on one of my alts. Actually, I spotted your devilsaur first. I'm guessing the airborne guards knocked you off your mount as you were flying to Spirit Rise.

I hope you made it to the fire!