For me the Holiday bonus events ruin the holidays.
 

This is not staff bashing, as I'm sure the events are well intended, and honestly I enjoyed them myself years ago.

Some of my fondest P99 memories were getting drunk on July 4th when P99 Green was still a new server. I was doing the Kobold Royals camp, and went through an entire 24-pack of Budweiser trying to get through level 45, which is considered an extreme hell level during this era of the game. There was no XP or loot bonus, but I had the time off, as did a lot of other players, and it was an epic marathon for all of us.

I find this to be the opposite experience in 2025.

It does not feel like the holiday bonus events bring in new or returning players, but rather, incentivizes the most active players to swap to their alts and monopolize areas of the game they would otherwise be uninterested in.

It's not the end of the world or anything, but from my perspective, I would rather enjoy my July 4th just hanging out in my room drinking beer and playing my favorite game rather than finding myself logging off after swapping to five different characters only to find every single camp in the game over-run with a long line of twinks or PL groups that have zero interest or need to add a random player to their group.

That's just my opinion though. Hopefully everyone else is having fun. I'm still going to get drunk, and hopefully convince a few of my friends to start some new characters on the Classic WoW anniversary server :) no XP or loot bonuses there, but 4 days off should be enough time to get our characters into WC and possibly even SFK if we really gun it !

It’s not the holiday event, it’s the dead, stagnating server

F R E S H W H E N

I'm not sure I get the logic with regard to leveling, but I see your point about farming. Just logged into chardok quick and every single named is taken.

I find there are a lot more pickup groups during bonus though.

Well I generally play a few hours every night and it's pretty chill so IDK???

Could be a side effect of all of my characters being 52'ish. All the stuff I mostly solo for hours without running into another player suddenly has a long line of twinks standing around trying to get their shot at the camp. I decided to check out City of Mist and KC since I do occasionally get groups there and it's over-run with a bunch of level 60s PL'ing guild groups. It's not serious either way, but I do think the holiday events have the opposite effect of making the holidays enjoyable for regular players.

throw down a challenge

im calling bs because no one does royals anymore

Are we talking about HK royals? They are camped around the clock even outside of holidays. Same with Felwithe and Paineel guards. Even Grobb is fairly well camped during normal hours.

Your whole post could be summarized by saying:

Fear of Missing Out.

Fun is subjective. Some people look at you drinking beer like a mad man, like -- sweet enjoy the heart disease and obesity! Some people look at it, like one guy posted -- lets go, challenge time, drink yay.

Lots of folks don't get a lot of time off except around the holidays and love playing games, so the staff doing bonuses etc, is like magic for them.

In conclusion, 4th of July is celebration alot of things, including freedom. Let people do wtf they want, and you do you.

Which freedoms exactly? That we did away with a 2% tax on a single item to be free to get taxed into the dirt with no representation?