Blog post
The MMO Holidays
December 15th, 2008
I don’t know about you, but I like gifts. Presents. New, shiny things delivered without notice and with no request for reimbursement or C.O.D.
And yet, when it comes to my gaming, I don’t want just anything… I want something so unbelievably COOL as to warrant me begging for more! Give me a Christmas card that stays in my mailbox or bank slot and nothing more?!? EPIC FAIL!!
When I played The Sims Online … *pause for the chuckles to die down* … SHUDDUP!! THAT GAME RAWKED!!
When I played The Sims Online, we would get an anniversary gift every year. And all year long people would speculate. Naturally, we rarely got what we wanted. I mean seriously… EA – did you not hear us?!? We wanted golden pink flamingos that would chase the yard gnomes and eat our tree fruits in front of our campfires!!! However, while what we received at anniversary time was great, I still anxiously awaited the holidays for my Christmas bear and snow people we could put on our front lawns! One year, I think they actually melted. It was awesome.
Regardless, now I play EverQuest II. And we get a new zone to play in every year… well, it’s never “new”, but we only get it for a short period during “Frostfell”. What I really enjoy that SOE has done in recent years is the daily greetings with an item for our house, and the daily gifts. Last year, our greeting cards were books for our houses, and the gifts were music globes. Yes, I have an entire set. Two, actually.
Don’t judge!
This year, I have no idea what all of the daily gifts are (but rest assured, I will soon be finding out!). However, I was thoroughly surprised to note that what I thought was another series of books from McScroogle Corp. was actually a pretty tabletop ornament! Now I must go buy a nice table for my house! Maybe next year, they’ll include one.
I know in World of Warcraft players have Winter’s Veil, too. And, although they do not have player housing, there are seasonal named mobs with certain loot drops. While I’m a custom-housing-to-decorate-with-frivolous-and-useless-objects kind of person, from what I understand some players in WoW will forgo any other playing until they’ve exhausted their farming potential for the drops they have spent the year dreaming of.
Other titles do similar things, so I have read. Although, Diablo II doesn’t have a holiday season – just a cow level. Even though that is awesomeness as it is.
No matter… my whole point here is I LUV TEH HOLIDAYS!!!
Tags: holidays, MMOs. Return to Blogs.
Comments
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bdew says:
There aren’t realy special spawns for Winter’s Veil that require special farming.
We do get some holiday quests – like freeing Metzen the Reindeer form goblin pirates that have kidnaped him and helping a snowman recover stolen treats from The Abominable Greench (big named yeti)
We get some presents in boxes under a tree, last year one of them was a clockwork robot minipet which was pretty cool
New this year is the achievments system that includes some crazy fun stuff (bombing flak cannons while flying… on a raindeer, throwing snow at players of specific race-class combinations… and one of the racial leaders) and some stuff that makes gouge your own eyes (killing 50 players in PVP while morphed into a Little Helper gnome – you can change into a gnome only outside battlegrounds and it does not persist through death, and i’m on a new battlegroup with 30-minute queues to get into a battleground)
Completing all the holiday achievments gets you a permanent “Merrymaker” title you can display near your character name.
bdew says:
Also thinking about it one game that did get presents right (and housing if we did mention it – someone should realy steal it from them and put into some modern game) is UO