I really don’t get Halloween. To me, in the UK, it’s always seemed a rather lacklustre and unremarkable affair, primarily manifested by the necessity to hide, in one’s own home, so that the roving gangs of 13-17 year old juvenile delinquent thugs think that you’re out, and move on to demand money with menaces…err…'Trick or Treat' elsewhere. At least at Christmas they have to sing a bit first. Humbug indeed!

In MMO-land however, it’s a much grander affair, and curiously, usually seems more meticulously and lavishly observed than anything Dec 25th has to offer. I can only imagine that this is because The Internet is largely a kind of overseas colony of the US, and so adopts mostly their holidays and customs. Although Halloween is technically today-only, I’m quite sick of it already, having seen more than my fair share of polygonal-pumpkins and virtual-candy as it is.

Warcraft opened what seems like three months ago, with their Innkeeper Trick or Treating, the event largely taking the form of most of their other holiday season events – free food and drink, and a few fedex-type quests for little amusing toys. Accessible to all, and nothing that game shattering – the key quest involving helping orphans develop Type-1 Diabetes by everyone on the server giving them four bits of far-flung candy each. (That’s about 3200 sweets for the lil Orcling, and around 9600 for the Alliance Podgeling. Why won’t the numbers leave me ALONE!?) They also had some themed PvP action in Hillsbarad, but I suspect Alterac Valley kind of crushed that, along with any other World-PvP these days.

Guild Wars has a number of Apocalyptic Horsemen type vendors selling various ghoulish consumables in honour of the season, and a "Mad King Thorn" holding court in some of the busier cities – you know, the usual; quizzes, prizes, festivities and mind-numbing terror. That said, they’ve just released an entirely new expansion in the last day or two, Nightfall, so most folks are probably a bit preoccupied there, I’d say.

When Second Life is up and functional, celebrations continue in there as well. Every prim has been replaced with a pumpkin. Well, it seems that way at least. Being a world rather than a game, there doesn’t seem to be any ‘Official Events’, but it is a world largely full of folks from the US, so pumpkin carving classes, flying ghost-particle scripts and witch-cyb0rsecks seem to be the order of the day all across the Grid there.

(Incidentally: SL 'Residents' is now at 1,203,213, meaning that 203,213 people signed up in the last 13 days, 20% growth. That works out at one new sign-up every six seconds for the last 13 days. That can't possibly be real, can it? I really need to stop getting so worked up about SL's frankly dubious bookkeeping...)

My personal favourite has to be Planetside though:

Planetside: The Chainblade Massacre

Yes, for several nights only, on the Promotional Events Battle Island (Extinction), it’s an all out Knife Fight! (Hopefully to The Fight Music From Star Trek!) As related elsewhere, I’m usually quite cool to the idea of 'Special Rules' events in PS, as they just confuse, unbalance and divide the players. But it’s a Knife Fight! (Hopefully to The Music!) I have no idea how this will play out, but have been wanting a go at something like this for some time. From what I gather, you get there, get Infiltration Suit for free, and are only allowed knives. Mayhem. I’d guess that the entire population of the Island will be using the Darklight implant, so the overall effect will be quite eerie, yes. Obviously the Melee Booster implant will be a must as well, but alas, as a Reservist, I only have one slot, and 'seeing them coming' will have to take precedence over 'doing double damage'. I have a bad feeling about this already…

There’s also some kind of 'roleplay' event thing listed there. What that means is harder to say. Possibly you get points toward a special merit for hunting down specific enemy players, these ‘Assassins’.

I think I’ll be spending my Halloween on Auraxis to be honest. An entire battle of knife-wielding cloakers just has to be seen. Or not, as the case may be…