Alright you two-week-long-tedious pond scum event, let’s do this.
This is far from my favourite holiday, though I think my love for nearly ALL the holiday events died somewhere over the course of getting the achievement [What A Long Strange Trip It’s Been], which was to collect all the achievements for every event. For a pink dragon reward. I love my pink dwagon dearly, it has a theme tune as my guildies will cringingly attest to. But I lost my love for these events, this one is one of the ones I like least though it is far from the worst. If you are currently trying to complete the Meta Achievement to earn a Pink Dwagon all of your own, my commiserations to you brave, unfortunate soul. If not, Good News! You can avoid all of this entirely! I’m going to break it down for you either way, and by break it down I mean something that is closer to a rant wrestling with a rage after both have been drinking heavily. Lower your expectations, people. Nope, lower than that.
Midsummer Fire Festival
First thing is first there is fire. Fire everywhere, it ‘s all about the fire. The fundamental idea of the event as I gather it is you want to put out the enemies fires and ‘Honour’ your own, which I guess is about the same as throwing a canister of petrol on there. Translation: If you thought they were raiding Silvermoon City every other night already? You know nothing! Now they have an actual legitimate excuse and purpose!
There are five achievements for putting out all the Alliance fires in total, and one overall achievement for achieving all five. You go Blizzard, you go. Same with your own faction, five for honouring all our flames and a sixth for getting those five. You have to do all twelve of them for the meta. The achievement is account wide, this means that you do not have to do it at all, but if you do, you only have to do it once! However…
It is not a bad source of income and/or experience for the two weeks the show is in town, but you know what? Because I love you all I went and got you the facts myself, so you can weight your options and decide if you can be fucked at all. 
These brazier things are EVERYWHERE. Trying to roleplay around them is a nightmare.
At level 90, which is currently the cap you get 9 gold 90-something silver per fire of your own faction (I almost typed Horde there, because you know I just assume everyone plays Horde.) Let’s call it an even 10g and go easy on my math skills eh? There are fifty five friendly fires spread over Outlands, Pandaria, Cataclysm, Northrend, Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms. That is 550g for flying around and smacking them. There is also forty eight enemy fires to extinguish for 19g 90s, again calling it 20g that leaves you with 960g profit. 1510g in easy if tediously boring cash.
I also tested them out with my 71 druid, who could still earn experience for them. I was horrified to find out that they much have leveled out the experience gain as I got the same from fires in Kalimdor as I did in Pandaria, which was way above her level. She was raking in 2g 40s and 11,055exp per friendly fire and a doubled; 4f 70s and 22,110exp per enemy fire. Be warned though if you are too low a level for a zone you will need a high level friend with a two-person mount to shepard you around to make that ball-ache even remotely worth it. I find a friendly neighborhood Steve with a two seater flying mount works well in most cases. It is still a quests worth of experience at least just for flying around. So if you are leveling that might be the most valuable use of the event to power level up your character some.
If you do decide to fly around and tag all of these damn fires then you’ll find yourself swiftly amassing floods and floods of these bastards: [Burning Blossom ] tokens. Like hundreds of the fuckers. Fear not, you can use these for several things.
1. Captured Flame. This pet is actually called The Spirit of Summer and can sell for 3-4k apparently according to my AH database add-on. So there is cold hard gold in it if you are not our for the pet collecting gig. Then again at 350 tokens it is pricey.
2. Brazier of Dancing Flames. This drops a brazier with adancing draenei holo-image made of flame. That if you click it turns you and any other party member that clicks it into the same. Dancing fire bitches. Oooooh yeah.
It’s fine for all of two minutes; it is BOP so there is no gold for it, at 350 tickets this one is doomed to spend eternity locked away in the farthest corner of your bank never to see the light of day again. Unless of course the need arises for a bunch of dancing draenei made of fire. Then. On that day. YOU’RE THE MAN THAT CAN. 
3. Sexy Outfits. I say outfits and I mean outfit, singular. And token wise this one is the cheapest at 1oo for the shoulders, 11 for the robe and for some bizarre reasons 200 for the shoes. They are gawd-damn-sexy shoes. Here is what it looks like on a male and female toon.
But the shoes apparently create a ring of fire type effect, and the shoulder spout bubbles or some shit and make you dance, so all in all you can get your par-tay on.
Achievements
So tickets spent all that remains is those last few achievements, because you gotta light up the boxes, right? It’s like any other internet game, when it throws you a objective you just-gotta-get-it.
The Burning Hot Pole Dance is easy if you opted to buy the sexy get up. Throw it on, touch the pole and let your avatar spin around it like a nutcase for a minute, sorted. If you don’t already have the sexy get-up you’ll have to farm up enough blossoms to grab it or this one is a no-go.
King of the Fire Festival is a deal more tricky. Do NOT wear your sexy new clothes for this one. They want you to put out the fires in the enemies capitals, this means either joining a raid on said capitals; good luck and good lag. Or, as I tend to do it; sneak in solo or in small groups and throw your friends at them as a distraction while you grab it. That is what friendship is, ladies and gents. Even better if you all stay up to stupid o’clock to do this –hoping- there will be less people around, sitting coiled and crouched waiting to take out your sorry-under-geared-ass. For that you get the halo-esque crown to complete your sexy outfit.
Ice the Frost Lord is simple enough, you have to be max level but it is simply a case of signing up to the LFR and engaging decisive blindness to Instance Chat for the 10 minutes maximum this guy will take to down. The real question here is does the bastard drop anything worth a damn. Asides from [Lord of Frost’s Private Label], the coolest drink around, that is. Cloaks, epic cloaks with numbers on them, don’t ask me if they are actually any good end-game or not, I don’t fucking know. Snowballs, HUGE ONES. An Enchanting formula for Deathfrost, which if nothing else, sounds badass. And A Shard of himself that allows you to choose either: [A Fairly Bland Tabard], or [A Fairly Bland Tabard (Recoloured)].
TL;DR No, this guy is useless. But YAY, ACHIEVMENTS!
Torch Juggler: you grab the torches from the merchants, head over to Dalaran, target the ground under your feet, put the torch on your action bar and spam it. Instant Achievement.
I am fairly sure if you are doing the quest line for this event you have to do a round of Torch Tossing. Thankfully that is no longer an achievement I don’t believe, nor the quest line’s completion, because it was an untold nightmare. If you decide to go ahead and do that one, catching fifteen tossed back torches I believe it is, I recommend you come stocked with your choice of strong beverage and then have a spouse or friend on hand to call in to do it for you. Because my stars that one nearly drove me to insanity. And I am a fairly patient person, usually.
EDIT: This post was first written during Mists of Pandaria. As we are now in the middle of Warloads of Draenor I updated it below.
I very briefly took a look at what items had been added since then and listed them below with their token cost. I also took a loot at the coin and explain gains for a level 100 character
At level 100 to break to down by expansion:
- Vanilla Own Faction fires gave me 7g70s, lets call that 8g. And destroying enemy fires gave me 15g40s, so let’s call that 16. So over Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor there were 28 Horde Home Fires that netted roughly 224g at level 100 and 30 Alliance fires that netted 480g. The cities are obviously a bit more than that but also harder to get.
- Outland had 7 horde fires to honour for 7g70s each and a total of 56g, and 7 Alliance fires to put how at 15g40s each and a total of 112g. This netted me a total of 168g
- Northrend had 8 horde fires to honour for 7g70s each and a total of 64g, and 8 Alliance fires to put how at 15g40s each and a total of 128g. This netted me a total of 192g
- Cataclym had 5 horde fires to honour for 7g70s each and a total of 40g, and 2 Alliance fires to put how at 15g40s each and a total of 32g. This netted me a total of 72g
- Pandaria had 7 horde fires to honour for 7g70s each and a total of 56g, and 1 Alliance fire to put how at 15g40s. This netted me a total of 72g
Total Estimated Profit At level 100: 1208g AKA Not nearly enough to be worth the tedium.
With the Toy Box now in effect the Brazier is more useful, no longer taking up bag space grabbing this item will add it to your toy box so you will have it available across your account for all your characters and only have to buy it once. There are also additional toys available to buy listed below;
- Cosy Bonfire 350 Tokens BOP Toy
- Burning Defenders Medallion 350 Tokens BOP Toy
- Ancient Heirloom Armour Casing 350 Tokens (Upgrades Heirloom armour to be effective up until level 90
- Timeworn Heirloom Armour Casing 600 Tokens (Upgrades Heirloom armour to be effective up until level 100
Here concludes the Midsummer Festival. At least in so far as I could give a crap. Do you play WoW? If you do what is your most hated Holiday Event and what is your Favourite?
