Holidays in MMOs

by: Kiara

Today the holidays are finally over. The rush of Thanksgiving, the winter holidays, and New Year has come to an end and life can return to normal.

How do the holidays fit into games? Some games put in some special events complete with snowballs, candles, presents, and fun quests with spiffy little rewards all themed for the holidays.

A lot of people get a kick out of such content. It breaks up the game and adds a little extra fun and good cheer. Not to mention the fact that snowballs are a blast. They're especially good for throwing at people with awful names.

There are other people who feel like real life holidays have absolutely no place in video games. Especially those set in a fantasy setting. They feel that real world holidays break immersion. Even when efforts are made to transmute the holidays into something fitting in with the theme of the game.

As with all things in MMOs, you can't please everyone.

This past holiday season Everquest 2 pulled out all the stops with their Frostfell content. They put in involved quests, special tradeskilling items, and games. The content was amazing.

Unfortunately, even all the effort put into this event for the players, hot on the heels of a major expansion, failed to please all of the players. The usual complaints were heard about spending time on useless holiday content when there were bugs to fix.

On top of that, people complained about the quests for Frostfell. Some of the quests couldn't be easily soloed, some of the rewards weren't cool enough. Now, I don't know what all is involved with coming up with quests, but I imagine it takes quite a lot to come up with something new and even remotely different and fun that can also be done in a relatively short amount of time.

With all the complaints, it was still a remarkable and entertaining event.

With Gods and Heroes drawing upon the culture and mythology of ancient Rome, how will they handle holidays? They've got a built in system of holidays for various gods and celebrations. Months long games in the colosseum for the death of an emperor, bread and games to keep the mob happy.

When Gods and Heroes goes live, will they make use of these holidays in lieu of real world events? Only one way to find out!