What did you do for Halloween, Van Hemlock? Well! I'm glad you asked! Let's get the annual 'I don't see why you Americans make such a fuss' rant out of the way early and get straight to the scooped out pumpkins, and free stuff, shall we? Only two real games on the go this year, City of Villains and Guild Wars, and both did very well. Second Life has no centralised community as such, and no 'GM Events' to speak of, so nothing special there really.
City Of Villains entered into the spirit of the thing by adding the previously mentioned Trick or Treat feature. I didn't do too badly there, getting enough different cosmetic enemy costumes to qualify for the 'Clothes Horse' (10) and the 'Fashionable' (25) badges. Badges are an integral part of life in there, so these limited edition seasonal ones are always nice to have.
I also found enough event salvage to qualify for my free extra costume slot. This came at the same time as I hit level 20, and now I have three different outfits I can flick between. Given that it took me two hours to decide on the original one, I have no idea what I'm going to do with these, and in any event, I tend to be invisible most of the time anyway!
One unexpected last minute extra was stumbling across an attempt to kill off one of the purple grade 'Giant Monster' Eochais; a 15 ft scarecrow with a bit of an attitude and a pumpkin head. I watched for a bit as perhaps 10 people wailed on it with various super powers, to little effect, and found myself suddenly roped in to help. I have no idea how many HP it had, or what kind of resistances, but fifteen of us battered on it for a good ten minutes, and it was actually regenerating faster than we could hurt it! Mind you, despite all it's stomping, flailing and so on, there were just so many targeted party AoE heals going off that no one assaulting it was in any real danger of dying. A bit of an impasse really, which was only resolved by zonewide spamming and requests for more people. I think it took 35 of us beating on it for twenty minutes to kill the thing off in the end. Hardcore! I quickly resigned myself to only bothering with my Assassin Eclipse backstabbing - the only language most people understand (or notice!), I find, and running out of the way to rest lots between stab recharges. Ask me to grumble about how much more powerful Brutes seem to be some time!
Still, we got the job done, and I got a neat extra badge, Hallow Spirit, which has a pumpkin with wings!
I was sort of picking away at the 'Trick' ambush monsters too, which offer similar badges, but I suspect it'll all be gone before I can fill those in. Never mind.
Meanwhile, in Guild Wars, Trick or Treat Bags were dropping out in the normal zones, which when opened gave you one-shot buff sweets and drinks, including my favourite, the Death Penalty Reduction Pumpkin Cookie! I'm hoarding all mine for that One Bad Tuesday.
A special PvP event was laid on, the 'Costume Brawl', where you go to a special arena, and are turned into a Hero or Henchman, based on your character's gender and primary profession. I ended up as Seaguard Hala, a very minor bit-part Luxon Mesmer who looks a lot like my character anyway. Bah; it could have been Gwen or Lady Althea, but noooo. More importantly, you also get given a set, static and pre-determined skillbar and attribute points, making this a quite unique kind of PvP arena, in that you know what everyone is going to be using. There were two different arenas, and battles took place between two randomly gathered teams of five players each, with capturable buff shrines, etc. A cross between Random Arenas and Alliance Battles.
The event received a mixed reception, with many seeing the prize; another Trick or Treat bag and seven points toward the 'Gamer' title track for a win, as not worth their time, and also being quite vocal and grumpy about being forced to use the set skillbars given. I can see their point; here's the Mesmer one I had to use:
Costume Brawl Mesmer
Fast Casting; 9, Domination; 14, Inspiration 11.
Which is a bit of a mess really.
The Elite isn't bad, Energy Surge, and is one I often use in my damage-based pure Mesmer PvE builds, when feeling lazy, and Energy Burn works well with that, for a good one-two blast. There are three interrupts in there, which I guess is very characteristic of what a Mesmer is supposed to be in PvP, in relation to the other professions. Ether Feast is the heal. There isn't any energy gain in there, and Empathy is about all you can do versus melee folks. I spent a lot of matches just running away from those a lot. Mostly it seems to be an anti-caster build, and as such did work fairly well against Elementalists, as you'd expect, and Necromancers, Ritualists and Monks to a lesser extent, but most of the other profession builds consisted of quite quick skills that I didn't have the reflexes to interrupt, even with Fast Casting. I'd have liked to have seen Backfire and Clumsiness in there to be honest, for greater versatility in the Hex area, or some kind of snare; Imagined Burden and similar, so I can get the hell away from this goddamned tank!
Most annoying of all though, was the inability to drag the skills into a more logical order! All the interrupts next to each other, that kind of thing, a sentiment I heard echoed a lot.
Still, I gave it a go, and one unexpected reward, was a surprising number plain old Balthazar Faction points, which you get for all things PvP, and can spend on skill unlocks for Hero and PvP-Only Character use. By the time I'd had enough of the whole thing, I'd gained a full 10,000 points, and bought a number of useful (and difficult to Capture) Warrior and Monk Elites for Koss and Dunkoro, so not an entirely wasted hour!
The main event, last night, was the visitations of Mad King Thorn, a... yes, you guessed it... 15ft scarecrow with an attitude and a pumpkin for a head! This chap visited Lion's Arch and Kamadan to hold court in a fun little scripted appearance lasting twenty minutes or so. As with all things communal in Guild Wars, it was the usual case of the sublime and the ridiculous, in that the event itself was quite clever, well thought-out and entertainingly different, and at the same time, the players were abusive, arrogant, dismissive and greedy.
Mad King Thorn would stand there, working through his scripted monologue, much of which was quite witty and engaging; portraying a darkly humorous psychotic personality and declaiming all sorts of past exploits, cracking jokes and challenging random players around him to games of rock-paper-scissors. Throughout all this we, his loyal subjects, are expected to show our attentiveness and respect by appropriately emoting at various points, or he kills us! /laugh when he jokes, /violin, /drums etc when he bellows 'PLAY OR I WILL RIP YOUR HEARTS OUT!', that kind of thing.
Those who get the timing right, get rewarded with another treat bag, and those who don't, are killed on the spot. Its a town though, so nothing too serious can happen, and you're resurrected immediately afterward for another go at the next response. Then there was a game of 'Mad King Says' which had me in stitches. Simon Says is an old, and fairly simple game, but a shocking number of players can't read properly or something, judging by the large numbers of sudden fatalities around me!
Of course these were mostly the same ignorant sub-geniuses who spent much of the event telling Mad King Thorn to 'f*ck off', calling him, the event, Arenanet, and pretty much anyone who would listen, 'ghey', (Do people still use that variation? Good grief!) suggesting that we kill Mad King Thorn and steal his stuff, suggesting that perhaps Mad King Thorn might like to suck their reproductive danglies, and all that. Typical Lion's Arch local chat to be honest, but disappointing none the less. I don't know about anyone else, but I found the sheer audacity and daring of dropping f-bombs on automated NPC pixels that can't actually hear you or respond in any manner, both powerfully erotic and eminently admirable! Bravo you - I want to have your babies!
Mind you, despite their obvious Scorn for the Thorn, they still all stuck around and waited the thing out. In the words of one wag; 'biatch weres my hat???', and at the end of it all, everyone present got one of the Festival Hats, the Scarecrow Mask for the Lion's Arch folks and the Mummy Mask for the Kamadan crowd. Whether they deserved it or not! I don't know why I let these muppets wind me up so much really. Ho hum. Guild Wars Local Chat - the single most compelling reason I know against Free-To-Play MMOs!
Still, I quite liked it all anyway, even if I was about the only person in Lion's Arch European District 52 who seemed not to bitterly resent having to be there at all just to get some crummy hat, and Mad King Thorn did indeed make me laugh at least:
- "When I first returned from the Land of the Dead, one of the fine citizens of Lion's Arch let out a cry: "Why King Thorn, you have a pumpkin on your head!"
- "And I said, "Eh? So he repeated, "Milord, you have a pumpkin on your head!""
- "And I said, "What? So he yelled, "Milord, you have a pumpkin on your head!""
- "To which, I replied, "A thousand pardons, fine citizen, I cannot hear you. I HAVE A PUMPKIN ON MY HEAD!" HA HA HA HA HA!"
/laugh