Well halloween's over and I'm possibly one of the few MMO players who's glad to see the back of it.
I don't generally like these holiday events. I like my fantasy world to be other, to be distinct from the reality I inhabit. It seems tawdry to stick pumpkins everywhere or santa hats or love hearts. Would Gandalf's struggle against the Balrog have been more epic if they had both been wearing party hats and tooting whistles? I doubt it.
On top of that Halloween isn't really celebrated in England much so it's odd to have all this trick or treat stuff. Not only is reality shoehorned into my adventure but it's foreign reality to boot.
But perhaps worse of all is experiencing it in a new game. Having just started GW2 and not knowing where anything is or what the quests are it's very confusing to have an overlay of seasonal quests. They seemed quite oddly implemented too. I went into one which was a maze. We were supposed to collect goo for some NPC before we got beaten up but I only collected 2 pieces and the random strangers I was with did even worse. So we failed, got beaten to death by monsters and there wasn't any apparent way to exit the event. As my character was only level 4 I just checked a couple of days later to see if she was still stuck in the maze then deleted her.
I have read elsewhere that some people loved the events so fair play to them. I reckon the most practical approach for me is simply to not log in for 2 weeks when one of these events come up and leave them to more social people who love showing off their broomsticks or whatever.
I agree 100%. Actually, I wanted to write exactly that on my blog myself, but then I got pounced by a wild work week, so... But yes, I find holiday events confusing, unimmersive (wasn't this supposed to be a different world?) and try to ignore them as much as possible.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree and Like flosch I avoid the holiday events as much as possible. Especially those that are unabashedly based on real-life events, such as Halloween, Easter, Christmas etc.
ReplyDeleteI think the only holiday events I followed in WoW were the Summer Festival, which gave out some good XP, and Children's Week, which triggers my daddy reflex. Though I did spend Halloween one year trying to get that bloody horse. Perhaps that soured me?
In GW2 I didn't even bother to do any of the events and all the Halloween based loot I picked up I sold on the exchange.
Mike