Story Time! M.T.M. On Festive Fennec Feature
Story Time! Festive Fennec Feature
Welcome to this extra-special Fennec edition of Story Time!
I’m your host M.T.M., and…did you just hear that collective groan and cheer when I said this would be the Fennec edition? See, that is what makes Fennecs so special. Love them or hate them, they always bring a strong reaction.
If you are new to Legendary, you may not know what the fuss is about. If you’ve seen Fennecs at all, it will likely be in the form of an inexplicable mountain of their feet you picked up while playing the campaign.
But they are so much more than piles of feet. They also have cute ears, a long history, and perhaps some lesson we can learn. So get cozy, because it’s Story Time!
The First Fennecs
Fennecs were originally added during Legendary’s first ever Power Up Event, a Dungeon called “Path of Wisdom,” where they dropped the rare and exclusive…XP potion! Look, it was April 2016. It was like the 8th event ever, the game was pretty much the campaign, and XP potions were a big deal.
Details get fuzzy after that. Not the good kind of fuzzy, like snuggly little Fennecs. The bad kind, where people don’t quite remember what happened. Power Up Events soon gave way to more familiar styles like Slayer and Bounty Hunter. There was a time when you could acquire the hero cards for the Fennecs. Despite not having a codex entry, a tiny number of players still have one and they are remembered for having an extra high dust value. However, at some point this also stopped, and while they could still be seen and players occasionally asked to be able to get them again (more for adorability than dusting), they were a historical footnote.
Magitech Miners and Fennec Fever
The forlorn Fennecs would have remained forgotten but for their footsies, if not for a flight of fancy by a forumite with free time.
In an unrelated thread about people getting way too many copies of “Urhart Drillfist,” N3twork’s own Alex Michelucci decided to make a cute little team with a Fennec. Of course, feisty Fennec fanatics knew this could only be the result of secret evil dev hax (please note: all dev haxs are secret and evil and spelled “haxs”). To make matters worse, when confronted, he deleted the offending fox! Not even a dignified dusting! This would not stand, with fervent Fennec defenders flocked to the forums to fight this folly.
It got, uh, kind of weird. I wasn’t even going for alliteration in the last paragraph, it just happened. I may be having a relapse of my Fennec Fever. Anyway, memes gave way to counter-memes gave way to…the game team actually going along with it. We soon received word a special Fennec event was in the works!
Fennecs Forever!
Finally, the fabled foxes found us in October 2018’s “Fennec Fright Fest,” where players fought [Haunted] Bosses and traded the candy we needed to hatch Pupkin from a Fennec Egg at the Pupkin Patch. Yes, really. This is the exact level of tooth-shattering, cloying adorableness to be expected from a Fennec event, and I loved it.
Some of us (hi!) went a little deeper into the event packs for Polterkit or Fennicula, while for the high rollers there was the rare Lucifur. If you managed to collect ’em all (lowercase, as to not infringe on intellectual property) along with some Fennec Bones from the Relic Pack, you could even acquire the exclusive Bone Digger. Others rolled their eyes at all the silliness, and made videos of dusting their new Fennecs friends. But that was…kind of what made it great. You could love Fennecs or love to hate Fennecs but either way it was some silly fun. Worst case scenario, hey, free dust!
Holiday Fennecs were briefly a thing after that. During “Lightning Deals Week” a form of the [Haunted] Bosses appeared again as [Lightning] Bosses, and one of the daily rewards was a Furkey Fennec. “Festive Fennec Cheer” was pretty much another run of “Fennec Fright Fest,” featuring an entire extra set of Fennecs, as well as [Frosted] Bosses.
It wasn’t all fun and games, though. The Fennecs were Wardens (except Jack Furst, who was a reskinned Ultra Rare) but couldn’t be Ascended, which made them pretty useless for endgame players (except for, you know, the cuteness). [Haunted] Bosses had all sorts of issues; they were too big or too small, or a boss meant for 100 players would spawn for only a handful. While the later versions polished up the mechanics there were still issues, even some of the fixes were controversial. I’m really just scratching the surface here, Fennecs aside, there was an unfortunate amount of fervor during these fancy Fennec festivals.
A Fennecless Future?
I fear the fabled Fennecs have been forgotten once more, by friend and foe alike. A forum fad can only go so far, and there is a flotilla of non-Fennec frivolity to find in the future.
Or…is there? Under all the silliness, Fennecs represent something I fear Legendary may have lost: truly unique events. Sure, we get changes and updates, but “Festive Fennec Cheer” was the last event where we had unique gameplay and rewards, something that used to happen regularly. “Hellboy” came close with some special prizes, heroes, and bosses, but they didn’t really change the gameplay. Despite them, and despite *being a Hellboy event*, it just doesn’t seem to have registered in the community’s collective memory like others did.
Perhaps Legendary is just growing up, in a way, and putting away toys like fun, but disruptive, event gimmicks. “Shoreline Smackdown” certainly had the silliness of a Fennec event but it didn’t have much in the way of unique gimmicks. Instead, we got the much-anticipated animation speed-up that week. The event won’t be remembered for that, like it would have been remembered if we had some elaborate quest (or Quest) to help Morte make burgers to earn his Flipmaster 5000™, but designing and implementing that system would have taken time away from other projects that may have more long-term value. At best an event gimmick runs occasionally (like [Haunted] also running as [Lightning] and [Frosted]), but animation speed-ups are forever.
What do you folks think? Are event gimmicks like Fennecs worth the trouble? Do you want more Fennec Events without all the complicated bits, or the complicated bits without the Fennecs? Let me know in the comments. Or just post cute pictures of animals, this got heavier than I was intending.
Oh, one last thing though, for those hoping for a Fennec-y future.
On May 8, 2019, three little heroes were accidentally made public in a never before used section of the codex. #5000, #5001, and #5002. We couldn’t see any names or images and they were soon removed, but there was some information that could be extracted: Balanced-class, Special-type, Warden, Power 6,838.
The precise stats…of Fennecs.
