Harvest Festival

The Harvest Festival is a quiet autumn holiday in World of Warcraft, held for a week in September or October. It was added in patch 1.6 in July 2005. In Classic, the Alliance and the Horde each laid out a great feast outside their gates, and players honored a fallen hero of their faction by carrying an offering to his grave: Uther the Lightbringer for the Alliance and Grom Hellscream for the Horde. It is a holiday of remembrance more than celebration, and one of the few with no competition at all.

Background

During the Harvest Festival, the peoples of Azeroth give thanks for the season's bounty and remember those who gave their lives for them. Both factions honor many heroes, but the festival's quests single out one each. For the Alliance it is Uther Lightbringer, the first paladin of the Knights of the Silver Hand, who was killed by his own student Arthas Menethil. For the Horde it is Grom Hellscream, whose sacrifice in killing the demon lord Mannoroth freed the orcs from their blood curse.

The feasts

Long tables loaded with food were set up in the snow before the gates of Ironforge in Dun Morogh and among the red rocks outside Orgrimmar in Durotar. Anyone could walk up and take the festival food from the tables:

• [Harvest Boar] and [Harvest Fish] to eat.
• [Harvest Fruit] and [Harvest Nectar] for a lighter meal or a drink.

The feast was free, and for many players the holiday consisted of little more than stopping by the tables on the way to somewhere else.

Honoring a Hero

The festival's one quest, Honoring a Hero for the Alliance and Honoring a Hero for the Horde, required level 30, since both graves lay in dangerous country.

At the Ironforge feast, the dwarf Wagner Hammerstrike handed Alliance players [Uther's Tribute] and asked them to place it at Uther's statue at his tomb in the Western Plaguelands, a peaceful glade in the middle of land overrun by the Scourge.

At the Orgrimmar feast, the orc Javnir Nashak gave Horde players [Grom's Tribute] to lay at the base of Grom's monument in Demon Fall Canyon in Ashenvale, where Grom died fighting Mannoroth. The canyon was full of demons and lay in the middle of contested night elf lands.

On returning, Alliance players received [For the Light!], a book of verse dedicated to Uther, and Horde players received [The Horde's Hellscream], a book in honor of Grom. A couple of days later, a letter from the festival host arrived in the mail with a [Bounty of the Harvest], a horn that conjures four loaves of [Harvest Bread] every twelve hours, which made it a handy reward for any class.

Trivia

• The holiday's dates often lined up with harvest festivals of East Asia, such as the Mid-Autumn Festival, and in Canada its last day sometimes fell on Thanksgiving.
• The festival books are short poems: For the Light! is signed by Jennre Loresinger and dedicated to Uther.

Later history

• The Harvest Festival has returned every year, largely unchanged. Patch 3.2 in 2009 added a separate autumn feast, Pilgrim's Bounty, with cooking quests and achievements, while the Harvest Festival stayed small.
• In 2019, tauren gained a quest to honor their ancestors on the cliffs above Thunder Bluff.
• In World of Warcraft Classic, the Harvest Festival was one of the first holidays to run, in the autumn of 2019.

Sources

• Harvest Festival, Warcraft Wiki
• Bounty of the Harvest, Warcraft Wiki
• All the in-game holidays that are part of WoW Classic, Blizzard Watch