I'll chime in that Everquest one clearly should have made that list simply due to the fact that the event it launched changed the game world for years to come, in a massive way.
When Everquest 1 launched the endgame at the time were a pair of dragons, being Lord Nagafen and Lady Vox. A short while after this the Devs had the bright idea of letting players go to other planes of existence to fight some hellishly challenging encounters. One of these planes was the Plane of Hate, home of Innoruk, god of the Dark Elves.
The event to launch the opening of this plane happened on Halloween. Two central lore figures, being Firrona Vie of the High Elves and Lannys T'val of the Dark Elves (and she's Innoruk's daughter to boot) threw down in a brutal battle with a very, very large amount of monsters spawns in Kithicor woods. Players got to run their characters into the zone and take part in the fighting. GM's assigned to the servers took the parts of NPC's in the zone, and triggered the scripts and so forth for the event by hand. As you would expect, this was a big deal.
The fallout of the battle left Lannys defeated and crippled, who was rescued by the actual appearance of her father, the God Innoruk. This wasn't his Avatar, this was the real deal. Innoruk then summoned his chief servant Hate, a demigod in status, and told his servant to kill all he could find. Because Innoruk expended the energy to show up on the material plane in his primary form, and not as an Avatar, there was a permanent opening to his realm created.
This did two things. People could go to the Hate plane to raid it, and it also added Kithicor spawning high level Undead during night time hours within the game.
The second change pretty much made Kithicor one of the most feared zones to travel through as a solo player trying to get from one side or the other. You were either REALLY good at Mob Dodging and hugging that damn wall, or you just sat around until Morning and went for it then.
The combination of a permanent (free) raiding zone with a previous benign zone becoming lethal for half of the game's day hours was a big, big thing, especially added that it all happened with a player interactable one time event with live GM's participating.
How you can mention Ultima in your top 5 and not include the Ultima Online Halloween monster server is beyond me. It was the perfect event.
The game was peaking in subscribers, Trammel was still not born to ruin the game, and it was the single most fun night I ever had playing UO.
Basically they opened a server where you could log in, make a new character, run around killing waves of monsters and then actually become one of the monsters. I loved playing the Ogre, and must have died a 1000 times that night.
They tried to repeat the event each year, but nothing can ever create the magic of that first night. I think Trammel was put in the following year, which of course ruined a great game. The only fun thing to do was wait for houses to decay, drop a new one and sell it. Though I have to say, Trammel was the best real estate game I ever played!
One moment I enjoyed were Ultima Online around 1999 or so. There was a haunted house area in Skara Brae that the devs went all out for. Back in those days, it seemed the devs had to personally go in and make it Halloween for us. Not sure if that was true but it seemed that way.
The good old days. Back when the devs of MMOs would host in-game events (be it Holiday, PvE, Quest, RP, etc) themselves and interact with the players. UO had a lot of this and EQ did to a point ... but soon after that ship sailed.
The ship didn't sail. Holiday events and live events have always been very common in F2P MMOs.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
The Star Trek Online featured episode "What Lies Beneath" debuted as a Hallowe'en episode, and it's still one of the cleverer, creepier MMORPG Hallowe'en events I've had the pleasure of playing. "Bonnie-kin. My Bonnie-kin ..."
first Holloween event in EQ1 had Dev contollled Darkelve generals sweeping across the main continent. On solusek ro we massed and took them on near Highpass hold. I was a lowbee chanter then and couldnt hit them with any spells except tash. till that point had never seen that many players in the same place at the same time. lag was awful so i just tash'd the hell out of em. has always been the best holloween gaming memory.
One of the games had a skull face on the moon once that was cool. cant remember what game though
The first Fallen Earth Haloween was very cool, they had their own twist on it of course but the core quest rewards were nice:
- Cricket Bat for melee users
- special Sawn of shotgun for pistol users
- Special Pump action shotty for the rifle users.
None of these items could be gotten any other way.
Plus lots of other haloween themed rewards as consumables and the whole thing lasted about 5 days. They also had some cool pumpkin patches & their own take on zombies.
This haloween all they did was a really bad haloween GM event that went quite wrong & caused the server to fall to its knees plus loads of people missed it as it had a very narrow window for participation. bit of a shame.
EQ 1's blow all this stupid "they gaves haloween masks and put some pumpkins out!"
Be it one of the "gods" (1 of the few raid bosses at the time for the game also) Innoruuk showing up in a normal zone and forever changing it into a living hell to even travel in (due to the events that happened) or the whole red sky pandimonium one with all the large mobs and the like.
It's painful to see people post crap like "LoL mades some new skins!!" "Wow gave us pumpkins masks and stink bombs to throw for fun" and all that..
It's painful to see people post crap like "LoL mades some new skins!!" "Wow gave us pumpkins masks and stink bombs to throw for fun" and all that..
While I agree that EQ1 definitely deserves mention, WoW does an excellent job of capturing the feel of the holiday as it exists in real life with all the costumes and trick or treating and overall festive atmosphere.
I played back in 1999, I remember just starting out as a High Elf Magician. Veterans of this game would know there was no "personal torch", night GREATLY hindered your vision range and High Elves had horrible night vision (did not know about conjure light-source at this time)
High Elves had infravision.. Try being a Human! I was a human druid and when it became night, I literally had to turn the gamma up to maximum to see.. I remember running into packs of wolves, bears, orcs, gnolls, etc.. One particular incident I ran directly into Lockjaw the Alligator in RO.. That didn't end well...
Rallithon Oakthornn (Retired Heirophant of the 60th season)
my first halloween mmo experience and most likely my best was with Asherons Call 1, it wasnt anything "super event omg wow look at that", type of event, just kill a certain mob, low chance for a body part to drop, take body parts to a event vendor and he makes a suit of their "skin", simple but satisfying ^_^
full skelleton costume + flaming skull as throwing weapon + invis doll mask = awesome combo, i think i started a trend on ff...sidenote though, the invisible doll masks were always ingame, and there was other costumes for halloween, and i could always switch the flaming skull for a rabbit orb casting weapon for added giggles
I've generally been happy with the City Of Heroe's Halloween events, especially as it seems to expand a bit more every year.
Initially it was just trick or treating
Eternal Night was added
Zombie Apocalypse got added
The Deadly Apocalypse was added
And now Dr. Kanes House of Horror trial was added
I've pretty much loved all of it -- There's a particular horseshoe-shaped motel in Peregrine Island that level 50s swarm to and farm. Click a door and if you get a trick, a whole bunch of nasties come out. It's fun for those of us to tackle and creates some good, epic controlled chaos. It's not all "abusive", as lower level people team up to knock on doors in the lower level zones which then has its own experience.
Yeah, I remember the Great pumkin skit performed by gnomes. It was very funny. The early Halloween's in wow were a lot of fun. Even now, even if I hadn't logged on in a while I come back for their Halloween event.
I'll confess to being a little creeped by the cursed villa in AoC the first time I entered it. They didn't use "Jello-vision" ( a wavey red fish eye effect that greatly reduced your line of sight) back then. It was dark, and very atmospheric, what with familar passages blocked off and the fountains spouting blood. Being still fairly new to the game, I was equally distressed the rez pad wasn't inside the instance ( meaning you couldn't remove any death penalty for 30min).
"It's not the ignorance of the people, it's that most of what they 'know', just ain't so" -Anonymous 19th century comic
Comments
I'll chime in that Everquest one clearly should have made that list simply due to the fact that the event it launched changed the game world for years to come, in a massive way.
When Everquest 1 launched the endgame at the time were a pair of dragons, being Lord Nagafen and Lady Vox. A short while after this the Devs had the bright idea of letting players go to other planes of existence to fight some hellishly challenging encounters. One of these planes was the Plane of Hate, home of Innoruk, god of the Dark Elves.
The event to launch the opening of this plane happened on Halloween. Two central lore figures, being Firrona Vie of the High Elves and Lannys T'val of the Dark Elves (and she's Innoruk's daughter to boot) threw down in a brutal battle with a very, very large amount of monsters spawns in Kithicor woods. Players got to run their characters into the zone and take part in the fighting. GM's assigned to the servers took the parts of NPC's in the zone, and triggered the scripts and so forth for the event by hand. As you would expect, this was a big deal.
The fallout of the battle left Lannys defeated and crippled, who was rescued by the actual appearance of her father, the God Innoruk. This wasn't his Avatar, this was the real deal. Innoruk then summoned his chief servant Hate, a demigod in status, and told his servant to kill all he could find. Because Innoruk expended the energy to show up on the material plane in his primary form, and not as an Avatar, there was a permanent opening to his realm created.
This did two things. People could go to the Hate plane to raid it, and it also added Kithicor spawning high level Undead during night time hours within the game.
The second change pretty much made Kithicor one of the most feared zones to travel through as a solo player trying to get from one side or the other. You were either REALLY good at Mob Dodging and hugging that damn wall, or you just sat around until Morning and went for it then.
The combination of a permanent (free) raiding zone with a previous benign zone becoming lethal for half of the game's day hours was a big, big thing, especially added that it all happened with a player interactable one time event with live GM's participating.
How you can mention Ultima in your top 5 and not include the Ultima Online Halloween monster server is beyond me. It was the perfect event.
The game was peaking in subscribers, Trammel was still not born to ruin the game, and it was the single most fun night I ever had playing UO.
Basically they opened a server where you could log in, make a new character, run around killing waves of monsters and then actually become one of the monsters. I loved playing the Ogre, and must have died a 1000 times that night.
They tried to repeat the event each year, but nothing can ever create the magic of that first night. I think Trammel was put in the following year, which of course ruined a great game. The only fun thing to do was wait for houses to decay, drop a new one and sell it. Though I have to say, Trammel was the best real estate game I ever played!
Guild Wars the MAD king
The ship didn't sail. Holiday events and live events have always been very common in F2P MMOs.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
The Star Trek Online featured episode "What Lies Beneath" debuted as a Hallowe'en episode, and it's still one of the cleverer, creepier MMORPG Hallowe'en events I've had the pleasure of playing. "Bonnie-kin. My Bonnie-kin ..."
Ok name some of these live events in the F2P genre that are supposedly common.
No mention of the original EQ1 Halloween events? Those were awesome!
first Holloween event in EQ1 had Dev contollled Darkelve generals sweeping across the main continent. On solusek ro we massed and took them on near Highpass hold. I was a lowbee chanter then and couldnt hit them with any spells except tash. till that point had never seen that many players in the same place at the same time. lag was awful so i just tash'd the hell out of em. has always been the best holloween gaming memory.
One of the games had a skull face on the moon once that was cool. cant remember what game though
The first Fallen Earth Haloween was very cool, they had their own twist on it of course but the core quest rewards were nice:
- Cricket Bat for melee users
- special Sawn of shotgun for pistol users
- Special Pump action shotty for the rifle users.
None of these items could be gotten any other way.
Plus lots of other haloween themed rewards as consumables and the whole thing lasted about 5 days. They also had some cool pumpkin patches & their own take on zombies.
This haloween all they did was a really bad haloween GM event that went quite wrong & caused the server to fall to its knees plus loads of people missed it as it had a very narrow window for participation. bit of a shame.
EQ 1's blow all this stupid "they gaves haloween masks and put some pumpkins out!"
Be it one of the "gods" (1 of the few raid bosses at the time for the game also) Innoruuk showing up in a normal zone and forever changing it into a living hell to even travel in (due to the events that happened) or the whole red sky pandimonium one with all the large mobs and the like.
It's painful to see people post crap like "LoL mades some new skins!!" "Wow gave us pumpkins masks and stink bombs to throw for fun" and all that..
While I agree that EQ1 definitely deserves mention, WoW does an excellent job of capturing the feel of the holiday as it exists in real life with all the costumes and trick or treating and overall festive atmosphere.
Rallithon Oakthornn
(Retired Heirophant of the 60th season)
my first halloween mmo experience and most likely my best was with Asherons Call 1, it wasnt anything "super event omg wow look at that", type of event, just kill a certain mob, low chance for a body part to drop, take body parts to a event vendor and he makes a suit of their "skin", simple but satisfying ^_^
full skelleton costume + flaming skull as throwing weapon + invis doll mask = awesome combo, i think i started a trend on ff...sidenote though, the invisible doll masks were always ingame, and there was other costumes for halloween, and i could always switch the flaming skull for a rabbit orb casting weapon for added giggles
I've generally been happy with the City Of Heroe's Halloween events, especially as it seems to expand a bit more every year.
Initially it was just trick or treating
Eternal Night was added
Zombie Apocalypse got added
The Deadly Apocalypse was added
And now Dr. Kanes House of Horror trial was added
I've pretty much loved all of it -- There's a particular horseshoe-shaped motel in Peregrine Island that level 50s swarm to and farm. Click a door and if you get a trick, a whole bunch of nasties come out. It's fun for those of us to tackle and creates some good, epic controlled chaos. It's not all "abusive", as lower level people team up to knock on doors in the lower level zones which then has its own experience.
Yeah, I remember the Great pumkin skit performed by gnomes. It was very funny. The early Halloween's in wow were a lot of fun. Even now, even if I hadn't logged on in a while I come back for their Halloween event.
I'll confess to being a little creeped by the cursed villa in AoC the first time I entered it. They didn't use "Jello-vision" ( a wavey red fish eye effect that greatly reduced your line of sight) back then. It was dark, and very atmospheric, what with familar passages blocked off and the fountains spouting blood. Being still fairly new to the game, I was equally distressed the rez pad wasn't inside the instance ( meaning you couldn't remove any death penalty for 30min).
"It's not the ignorance of the people, it's that most of what they 'know', just ain't so" -Anonymous 19th century comic
The haunted house this year rocked on CoH/V