Brewfest has been active for 18 or so hours on my realm now, and I’ve participated in five or six Dark Iron Dwarf raids of the festival.

Three or four of them were a lot of fun, if not chaotic, but with all that was going on, the game stayed pretty smooth and continuous throughout the whole invasion (which lasts what, 5-10 minutes?).

One or Two of them were ‘griefed’, which caused significant lag during the event, or annoyance afterwards.

I’m hoping that tonight there will be an emergency shut down to apply a hotfix to two major issues:

1. The Beer Barkers
2. Visibility of Blix, turn-in NPC for after event

Griefing The Beer Barkers

Beer Barkers are griefed by setting up a macro that executes as many /wave as possible, and spamming it. The Beer Barker’s job is to respond to each /wave with the attempted delivery of a Complimentary Brewfest Sampler. The Sampler is thrown at your toon, bonks you on the head, and is in general kind of funny to obtain.

The Sampler is SUPPOSED to be ‘used’ by a player, resulting in the player drinking the beverage and then throwing the mug out ahead of them, as if at someone. Once the beverage is thrown - and throwing has a cast time on it to prevent spam-throwing - the Beer Barker throws the player another Sampler to repeat the process.

Having two or three /wave x 500 spammers outside of an event is annoying and spammy, but during an event it impedes players who are actually taking part in the event from getting THEIR Samplers which are an integral part of ’slaying’ the Dark Iron Dwarves. The Beer Barkers are too busy responding to 500 /waves from someone who isn’t even taking part in the event.

And of course, most of the griefers are level 1 toons with names with illegal characters - in other words, OBVIOUSLY set up for griefing.

Once 4 PM rolled around, my event partner guildmate and myself decided to finish the Quest given to us that required us to go to the Grim Guzzler in Blackrock Depths. Competing with the growing number of evening players logging in and attending the Brewfest invasion event didn’t sound like fun and we were right - when we returned shortly after another event had ended, outside of Orgrimmar was SO INCREDIBLY LAGGED it was hard to turn our BRD quest turn in. Finally, I was disconnected entirely.

Griefing The Turn-in

Another place that has been griefed is after the event - ‘Blix’, the NPC who makes suggestive remarks to all the players walking by, is a Goblin, and thus is very small.

He’s also standing on the ground when I think he should be standing up on a pedestal.

After a Dark Iron invasion event has completed, everyone involved rushes to Blix to turn in their marks (which have a time dependency so they cannot be hoarded from one invasion to the next) in order to get the Brewfest tickets that can be turned in for the Brewfest goodies.

Some people (usually more than one) are finding it funny to mount up on their big Tauren mounts with their huge equipment, and stand right on Blix.

That, combined with the 75 other people swarming around trying to turn in tickets makes it nearly impossible, even in first person view, to find Blix and interact with him to turn in your tickets.

My fix for this one was just to stand near Blix during the entire event itself, and when I notice that the event is dying down (one of these times I’ll pay attention to the clock), I go and do my turn-ins before the crowd descends. The griefers are generally also looking to get tickets so they’re not in Grief Position yet if you’re fast enough.

I think I’ll let the event go on its own for the evening, however, and pick it up again in the morning when the population is the lowest and competition and griefing hopefully at its lowest.

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I started the Brewfest quests this morning and have been fortunate enough to be able to spend the day fiddling around with what was going on, while also discussing things with a couple of guildmates who were also able to be around.

After getting the initial Racing Ram quests with the Barrel delivery overwith (written about in the previous entry), I was able to return to Ram Master Ray one last time for the day and talk to him, but this time he doesn’t have an exclamation mark over his head to indicate there’s a quest. When you talk to him, however, he has an option to choose: “Do you still need some help moving kegs from the crash site near Razor Hill?”.

If you choose that option, you’re mounted up on a Ram once again and given three minutes to do your deliveries. Each time you make a successful delivery you receive two Brewfest Prize Tickets, plus time is added on to your “time left on mount” timer and you can continue on. When your “time left on mount” expires, you’re dismounted and cannot do the delivery quest again until the next day.

Theoretically, if you’re really good at this delivery game, you can keep going and going and going on your Racing Ram, having enough time added to your total each time to keep you going for another round. If you’ve got a few different toons to practice this quest, it would probably pay off on your main toon who is vying for, say, the Swift Racing Ram mount.

Pink Elekks On Parade

This quest is given by Glodrak Huntsniper, who is just inside the Brewfest Festival area, on the left, between tents, surrounded by some low boxes. He also gives the quest “Catch the Wild Wolpertinger!” which is a one-time quest that gives Wolpertinger's Tabard (companion pet) as a reward.

The Pink Elekks quest seems to be repeatable at 6 hour intervals or so, from what I’ve seen [UPDATE: It's apparently a ONE-TIME quest, but I was lucky enough to get it twice] - I completed it at about 8:30 AM and found the yellow exclamation mark had returned at just before 3 PM. I’ll check again at 9.

At any rate, when you finish this quest (which involves running around to Thunder Bluff, Undercity and Silvermoon to “slay” Pink Elekks with some physical device Glodrak supplies) and turn it back in to Glodrak, you’re rewarded with 40 Brewfest Prize Tickets! Not bad, especially if it’s repeatable at 6 hour intervals.

Next up, explanation about the Dark Iron Dwarf invasion of the Festival - how to get involved, how to “slay” some dwarves, and where to turn in the marks you receive from the process. Stay tuned!

Tags: barrel delivery, brewfest, brewfest festival, brewfest prize ticket, brewfest quest guide, catch the wild wolpertinger, daily quests, dark iron dwarf, dark iron dwarf invasion, dark iron dwarves, epic land mount, glodrak huntsniper, land mount, pink elekk, pink elekks on parade, racing ram, ram master, razor hill, seasonal event, seasonal mount, silvermoon, special event, swift racing ram, thunder bluff, undercity, warcraft mounts, wolpertinger, wolpertinger's tabard, world of warcraft, World of Warcraft