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 31st
and see who gives us a
trick and who delivered the treats.
style="">
style="">World of Warcraft has
an event for every season, and this year with a nod to
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/76211">El
Día de los Muertos,
they
have two around Halloween.
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href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/75637">
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src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/75637" />
style="font-style: italic;">
style="font-style: italic;">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.
style=""> 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.
style=""> 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.
border="1">
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src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/75733" />
style="font-style: italic;">
style="font-style: italic;">Costumes and treat bags
in Free Realms
The
polar opposite of subscription based traditional MMOGs,
style="">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.
style=""> 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.
style=""> 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
style=""> 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 11th.
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.
