Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

The pumpkins have been thrown out, the decorations taken down, soccer moms have hung up their naughty nurse outfits and replaced them with the expensive track suits. The little ghosts, goblins and ghouls have returned to their normal forms and the only remnants are the smudges of chocolate on their lips as another Halloween has come and gone both in the real world and in our virtual communities. With so many games available, and the vast majority of them offering up an in game celebration, it has become apparent that art once again imitates life as some games and their developers focus on the fun while others merely pander to the commercialism of the holiday.

Halloween is one of the most beloved holidays for many reasons, free candy and scantily clad women not the least of them. Halloween requires no religious affiliations or national loyalties, there is no social stigma attached to it and it isn’t a holiday that was invented by Hallmark. The universal appeal of the holiday is its simplicity and its single minded goal - fun.  As persistent world gaming has grown relatively unchecked in the past decade it has begun to morph more from pure fantasy to become an extension of our own daily lives, from in game calendars to pizza delivery, the game shell has become for many the default desktop. Seizing on this, the game developers have added many weapons to their arsenals to keep us immersed and interested in the games and holiday tie ins have taken their place among the most tried and true ways to keep players logged in.

With all of this in mind it is hardly surprising that nearly everyone reading this, no matter what your game of choice, has firsthand experience with an in game holiday event and has an opinion about them. With so many games featuring them this year it would be both mundane and borderline madness to review each of them, so we will look at two very different games and their very different approach to October 31^st and see who gives us a trick and who delivered the treats.  

World of Warcraft has an event for every season, and this year with a nod to El Día de los Muertos, they have two around Halloween. 

Sometimes your tempted not to come up for air

Sadly, with each holiday event they get less and less fun, and become more of a grind. This year’s event was probably the most eagerly anticipated holiday since WotLK was released as it was the last one many gamers needed to complete the meta achievement that awarded them a 310% speed flying mount, which is a pretty big deal for most WoW players. The tying of these holiday events to the achievement system is what has led to them being less about fun and more about grinding the same inane events over and over, some as often as once an hour, in the hopes of completing them all before the event is over.  While many of the games most diehard adherents will tell you the reason they play WoW over other games of the genre is because the other games are too much of a grind, holiday events such as this are a perfect medium to expose this myth and make the grind more transparent, just because you aren’t camping a mob doesn’t mean you aren’t grinding folks.

A victim of its own success, WoW is too large and too populated to ever hope to hold GM run events that other games use around holiday times so it needs to find other ways to bring back the fun. One of the major problems with the event this year was the ad-nauseum killing of the headless horsemen, both in the larger game world and within an instance. Players could do a daily quest in a small village outside any of the major cities to help put out fires being set by the headless horsemen and then once the fires were out, could vanquish him. The horseman was also a triggered daily event inside an instance where players could summon him for the chance to loot some epic items once he died. Each player in a five person group got one summon, so you could get a shot at him five times per day in hopes of getting either an item you  wanted , or one you needed for your achievements if you were lucky enough to see them drop.  The repetitive nature of both these events diminished any sort of reward one felt for completing them and instead made looting the corpse an exercise in frustration as the same three rings kept being revealed and left to rot.

If Blizzard could find a way to modify the events to a quest chain that would allow players to pick the rewards they wanted and gave the needed items  for achievements they could give the whole event a more epic feel and create something truly memorable and fun.

Costumes and treat bags in Free Realms

The polar opposite of subscription based traditional MMOGs, Free Realms, captured the true meaning of Halloween - dressing up and having a damn good time. While the target audience of Free Realms is also the demographic that still dons costumes and goes door to door, the developers at SOE nailed the spirit(pun intended) of the night with their Super Spooktactular.  The team at Free Realms focused on the lighter side of the holiday with fun costumes,  quests and a dance party main event to cap it all off. While some of the more interesting items were limited to members or the microtransaction store, there was still enough to do even for a basic member that it never felt empty or diminished.  Having in game events such as the dance party and the dungeon descent foster a sense of community and give everyone a chance at a fun and socially interactive experience that enhances the holiday overall for the players, kudos to SOE and the Free Realms team for delivering a giant treat bag this year. If you haven’t experienced the game yet, you can still see the festivities from this event until November 11^th.

From scripted boss encounters to playing a game of hide and seek trick or treat with a GM, the best and worst of gaming was on display this year for Halloween. With new games looking to make a splash, old games looking to keep players hooked and everything in between it is now evident that holiday tie-ins aren’t a passing fad and will be a part of MMOGs for a long time to come.