Pilgrim’s Bounty ‘09 Ends

This year was the first time World of Warcraft experienced the Pilgrim’s Bounty world event and it’s finally come to a close. The world events we’ve experienced already this year like Hallow’s End, Brewfest and others have been updated versions of what we’ve seen when they first came out. But Blizzard has learned a lot about hosting these events over time and while updating them makes them feel nice, there’s nothing like designing one from scratch based one lessons already learned. That’s how I felt about the debut of Pilgrim’s Bounty event this year.

It’s the first event this year that I’ve really felt that Blizzard learned something from past mistakes and learned something about what they got right and compiled it into what we saw in the recently concluded Pilgrim’s Bounty. It seems to have almost everything you’d want from a world event like this. You have quite a bit of stuff to do in the form of achievements like going into enemy cities (reminiscent of the Midsummer Fire Festival), hunting turkey (like collecting eggs in Noblegarden), and going after the Rogues (like putting the bunny ears for Noblegarden). You also get a pet Plump Turkey and a nifty title for completing everything. The one thing that amazed me about this event was that even if you weren’t into all the achievements and stuff you could still get into the spirit of Thanksgiving by cooking and cooking and cooking. The ease at which characters could level their cooking from 1 to 350 made this a great reason to participate in the feast.

Sure we didn’t get everything that a world event would offer. We didn’t get that one boss that players could get special epics from like the Headless Horseman or the Brewfest boss. But not every event has this sort of thing anyway. The Feast of the Winter Veil, which happens to be coming really soon, doesn’t offer this sort of thing yet it’s still a fun event to participate in. Considering what we got in the Pilgrim’s Bounty, that’s quite a handful of fun stuff for a world event to offer. I really hope that future world events take their lead from Pilgrim’s Bounty and if they do I think we’ll have even more fun events to come.