Halloween Massive Gaming News

Holidays are always interesting times in the Massive Gaming market and this weekend is no exception. Spooks, trick or treating, interviews, anniversaries, and conferences are just some of the Halloween weekend news to share. Read on for the details.

City of Heroes is running a Trick or Treat and Zombie invasion event this weekend. Folks in Europe looking to get their cape on can look forward to participating sometime next year.

Anarchy Online is celebrating the season with a holiday ball and costume contest, as well as nanotech transformations and monster sightings.

Final Fantasy Online players and developers have a lot to be happy about this weekend. Today is the one-year anniversary of the North American launch, and they're throwing a party to celebrate. In-game, the annual trick or treating, costuming, and spookery is going on. This year they're also throwing around some glamours to let players take the part of monsters for a while. Square-Enix revised upwards it's earning estimates this week, giving even executives reason to smile.

In non-holiday news, Richard Garriot was interviewed by HomeLAN about the upcoming Tabula Rasa game, and MMORPG.com has some new info on Dungeons and Dragons Online from the lead designer.

Finally, the Second Annual State of Play conference is this weekend, drawing Virtual World academics from all over to celebrate Halloween by lecturing. Nerd on, guys.

Update: 10/28 18:50 GMT by Z : There's a press release going around stating that City of Villians playtesters will be drawn from the ranks of veteran CoH players.

heh

[sakura the mc]

they even put halloween items and stuff on the T4C server i play on

Guild Wars

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget about the Guild Wars (http://guildwar.com/ [guildwar.com]) World Preview Event also happening this weekend.

Guild Wars for Halloween

[Gnasty]

Guild Wars is having a free preview event this weekend starting tomorrow, thru Sunday... Hopefully it will be more of a treat than a trick. And hey, just think of all those free costume ideas! :-)

http://www.guildwars.com/press/pr06-10-27-04.html [guildwars.com]

Asheron's Call 1

[Etone]

AC1, which used to be known for having holiday-themed items/quests in patches, this year has nothing holiday related.

I think this marks the first year in its history that it hasn't.

-E-

Re:Lineage II

[dfiguero]

I've been in Dion twice when those announcements came. In one of those times I had a store set up in one of the town's entrances and 1 or 2 mins after the announcement a couple of skeletons came and started hitting me.

The other time I also had a store but this time I had learned my lesson and set the store away from the entrances. I saw 3 or 4 mobs running into town targeting the guy with the shop closest to the entrance.

Not sure if it has to do with Halloween or C2 coming out.

Pumpkin Pie

[hattig]

Take 1 Pumpkin, hollow it out as you would normally because you want to make it into a scary face. Keep the seeds for roasting (wash them, roast on tray for 90 minutes, have with salt). Throw away the guts. Cut out lots of the flesh until the pumpkin is around 1cm thick all around, or less. Spoons are good for scraping. Most of you should have well developed wrists so you shouldn't get too tired by scraping repetitively.

Boil the pumpkin flesh for half an hour, drain and mash.

Heat oven to 200C/400F. Put shortcrust pastry into pie dish (9" or more, if you got lots of pumpkin flesh).

Beat pumpkin with can of evaporated milk, 2 eggs, 3/4 cup brown sugar, 1/2 teaspoon each of ground cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and salt. Mix well.

Pour mixture into pastry lined pie dish. Cook 40 minutes or until knife comes out of pie clean when inserted. Serve hot with cream.

Alternatively search Google for Pumpkin Pie recipes. But don't waste that pumpkin flesh! You can also make pumpkin soup.

Ultima Online

[necro2607]

Um, you managed to not mention probably the most groundbreaking (and probably the first) MMORPG on the net, Ultima Online, which always has plenty of fun in-game stuff around each holiday! Then again their site doesn't say a thing about Halloween, so I can see why it wasn't mentioned. I guess they're too busy promoting their totally off-topic new expansion...

I've only played for about a year but for example, the first Christmas when I started they gave out some house decorations like snowflakes, snowmen, poinsettia and some holiday wreaths. They also had a contest for the best Christmas-decorated house and stuff.

Re:More interesting *after* Halloween

[HanShootsFirst]

No way will WoW be released November 22nd. Many beta testers have their doubts about it being released in 2004, and knowing how Blizzard will not release a game before it's ready, that would not suprise me. If there's anything Halo 2 and Half-Life 2 have tought me, it's to not get excited until something official has been said.

Re:Scary HTML

[wowbagger]

Just use the CTRL+Mousewheel zoom - click up one, click down one.

The resulting forced redraw will correct the page.

Re:More layers of separation

[iCEBaLM]

Ahh, but this isn't exactly whats happening in FFXI. Basically a few NPCs in the three major towns (San D'Oria, Bastok and Windurst) are "dressed up" as monsters, you give them sweet treats (like chocolate, pies or fruit) and they will either give you a halloweenish item or turn you into a monster.

The monster costumes they give you are enhancements which can be "clicked off" or wear off when you go to another zone, say, outside of town. Since no battles can be had in town then there's no user controlled fighting monsters.

Re:More interesting *after* Halloween

[frkiii]

I agree in EQ II, but SWG sucked out of the box and for many many many months after.

Last time I checked (May 2004), there were still problems with pets auto-storing, zoning, etc. at or near server boundaries, etc.

I played a solid three months from two days after release, the giant nerf bat started whacking, and I left.

I had an account for a while after still, checked in a couple of times to see what improvements were made. Was not impressed, the game is a bomb, IMHO.

Re:A shame there aren't better player tools for ev

[kannibal_klown]

Well, I was on the test server and got to experience their trial of halloween.

You can click on each mission door (assuming it's not unlocking YOUR mission), and get either a trick or a treat.

Tricks involve witches, werewolves, or pumpkin heads attacking you.

Treats involve inspirations, some enhancements, and the almighty ROCK!

It was interesting, but nothing to write home about.

I wish they'd start doing more events. Supposedly the latest incursion of eye-balls was just sort of a "recon" thing, with speculation that a large scale invasion is down the pipe.

I've stopped playing recently. It's going to take something massive (like the original Ritki invasion) to get me to fire up the game again.

Re:Asheron's Call 1

[Tofino]

AC's fall costume whackiness is happening with next month's prop. But yes, there will almost surely be an event of some sort on Oct. 31. Bit annoying that the costumes, scarecrows, pumpkins, and such are in for November though. I guess they're THANKSGIVING pumpkins!

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