Every year again… not only Christmas arrives, but also Christmas events in MMOs. This year, they seem to be more numerous than ever, and we want to know: Are you celebrating it?
Seasonal events in MMOs are more numerous today than ever. Usually, it starts in October with Halloween, followed by more and more games celebrating Thanksgiving, and even Black Friday is being increasingly featured. However, the queen of all holiday events remains Christmas!
Santa hats, snow, and gifts
In doing so, developers in almost all games pull the same strings. There is almost always an area in the game where it suddenly snows and colorful Christmas lights are set up. For example, the city of Lion’s Arch in Guild Wars 2, which is visited every year by Christmas Asura Tixx and his airship.
Additionally, there are usually special Christmas costumes, which almost always include the obligatory Santa Claus hat in Coca-Cola colors. Often, there is also some kind of fur outfit. Or everything is sexy and super cheesy like in Blade and Soul. Although that fits perfectly with the style of the game.
Christmas with the cats, the “Toypocalypse”
Besides the decoration stuff, there are of course also plenty of special holiday quests to complete. Particularly cool is The Elder Scrolls Online. There, the inhabitants of Tamriel celebrate the “New Year’s Day“, which is a combination of Christmas and New Year’s Eve. As each of the numerous races there has a different way of celebrating this holiday, we get to do a unique quest for each. So if you have always wanted to know how the feline race of the Khajiit celebrates, you should not miss ESO.
Guild Wars 2, on the other hand, offers for the “Winterfest” the aforementioned Asura Tixx, who operates a fully automated gift factory with his airship. This factory is also the setting for a very funny quest called “Toypocalypse”, where the toys go crazy and start rioting. Therefore, we have to intervene and encounter rabid plush toys, trigger-happy toy soldiers, and just sassy princess dolls!
The true face of Christmas!
Taking a different approach is WildStar. There, Christmas at the “Winterfest” shows its true face, as in the colorful world of WildStar, it has devolved into a pure consumer event. Almost like in our world. Therefore, it is not surprising that the hyper-capitalistic Protostar corporation dominates the festival, and we have to fulfill all sorts of silly tasks in a kind of massive shopping mall, such as defusing exploding toys or taking out wild shopping robots.
The list of Christmas MMO events could go on forever, but right now we want to know your answer to the question: Do you celebrate Christmas in MMOs? Do you exuberantly celebrate the festival of love and consumption in the MMO of your choice? Or is Christmas already annoying enough in real life? Let us know and write it in the comments!
