Filed under: Contests

If ever there was a person that could be called the cornerstone of EVE Online's blogging community, it would be CrazyKinux. His gargantuan efforts to get the EVE community blogging have been met with continual success. In his monthly "EVE Blog Banter" segment, CrazyKinux presents readers with a topic to blog on and starts off in-depth discussions. On occasion, the EVE Blog Banter becomes a competition with a few prizes provided by CCP. CrazyKinux and other judges peruse submissions to bring us the best of the month's blogging efforts and reward their writers deservedly. Our own contributing editor James Egan and EON Magazine Editor Richie "Zapattero" Shoemaker have been judges in previous contests.

The latest edition of the EVE Blog Banter was a bumper contest with prizes for the top ten writers supplied by the EVE merchandise store. A record 56 participants wrote their take on why they love EVE Online and what makes it special for them. Amongst some of the more impressive entries, CrazyKinux whittled his choices down to his top 10 favourite entries. The first prize of $100 to spend in the EVE merchandise store went to "Wench with a Wrench", second place went to "Don't Fear the Mutant", third to "Into the unknown with gun and camera" and fourth to "Sered's Lives". If you're interested in seeing what makes EVE special to a variety of players, the six remaining finalists and the other entries in the contest are certainly worth a read. For a full list of winners and participants, swing by the winner's announcement at CrazyKinux's Musing.

If you were one of the people lucky enough to get into one of our two Aika beta key giveaways, you've probably been enjoying the chance to see what the most recently announced title from gPotato has to offer. The promise of large-scale PvP always gets people excited, after all, and it doesn't hurt that the game has a very polished and stylish look to it. But the real question is how the PvP will play out... which is why it should come as no surprise that the developers are taking the opportunity during the closed beta to host a domination tournament for the players. Four guilds from each nation will be set against their fellows in a winner-take all elimination match.

The process is simple -- players should send a private message to the GM Lingo with their guild name and the number of members. The four largest guilds will be notified and set to begin the tournament on Monday, February 8th at 5:00 PM PST (8:00 PM EST). Each guild will pick out six of its finest members to be sent out as champions, and the tournament will last through both Monday and Tuesday evening. If you're in Aika's closed beta, there's still time to enter, so get your guild together and get ready for the event!

Valentine's Day is just around the corner, and City of Heroes is ready and willing to help you woo your sweetheart. Well, as long as your sweetheart is the War Witch -- anyone else and you're on your own.

They're making it worth your while, though. The City of Heroes Secret Admirer Contest invites you to create a digital or homemade Valentine's Day card for the War Witch and submit it for the chance to win some great prizes. While we can't guarantee that the lady herself will be presenting you with her phone number, three people in each category (homemade and digital) will be presented with prize packages including Logitech gaming headsets and a pile of CoH goodies.

The contest is going on now and will last until the submission deadline of February 28th. Take a look at all the rules and regulations here, and good luck to you!

If there's one storyline that comic book writers love coming back to, and there certainly is, it's the idea of the main characters losing their abilities. Seeing whether or not heroes can overcome challenges without their gifts, or if villains are as dangerous when merely mortal, gives a lot of definition to normally superhuman antics. It's time for creators in City of Heroes to take on that trope, because the latest Mission Architect contest is all about taking the power away from the best-known champions of the city or the isles.

The contest, running until February 24th, requires an arc centered around a known figure losing their powers, be they hero or villain. If that's not enough to capture the feel, though, the arc is meant for the lowest possible level band of 5-10. There's also a brief reminder that part of the goal is to stretch one's legs, and that the best arcs will likely incorporate features not generally found in low-level content. As with the prior contest, the prize is a permanent title and a potential Developer's Choice pick for the arc, so City of Heroes players should start thinking about what would be a fun way to be unempowered.

It's certainly not everyday we hear that a game has been launched in the Arabic language here at Massively, but we guess that today is one of those days! The free to play title Silkroad Online has gone the distance and has translated their game into Arabic.

To help celebrate the new translation, the entire international Silkroad community is getting two events with real world prizes. The first event, which is less of an event and more of a raffle, gives you between two and ten contest tickets each time you purchase cash for their item shop. If your contest ticket is pulled, you could win prizes including an 8 gig iPod Nano or a brand new laptop.

The second event, which is more of an event, is to level a character from one to 40 before March 2nd. If you successfully make it, you'll get entered into a separate raffle. Prizes here include 10,000 skill points for a character to spend on increasing your skills, Seal of Moon grade weaponry for your characters, or a brand new PSP.

For all of the information on these two events, check out the Silkroad main page.

One of the more family-oriented MMOs currently on the market, Wizard101, celebrates Valentine's Day via its annual Friendship Festival, a concept that some of us can enthusiastically get behind. Its approach has been heralded by the return of the vendor NPC Valentia Heartsong, selling special holiday items in exchange for the game's microtransaction currency, Crowns. But in an effort to get players feeling just a little bit more friendly, the game's staff is running a special contest to give away some of the holiday items for free.

Every day until February 12th, the team will select one of their followers on Twitter at random, contact them via Twitter, and ask for their Wizard101 account name. That means that entering the contest is as simple as following the game @Wizard101. The prize is handed out at noon each day, which means there's still plenty of time for the game's players to get in on the fun and get a little something extra. And besides, following a game you enjoy on Twitter is good practice anyway. Fan of the holiday or not, it's hard not to like a friendly gesture such as this.

As Christmas recedes into memory, it's easy to forget about the stress of the various celebrations and just remember the nicer parts of the holiday. For our characters in City of Heroes, of course, the holidays saw yet another onslaught by elemental minions of ice seeking to spread permanent winter. But the pot was sweetened a touch by the addition of the holiday contest, a chance for players to decorate their base or alter their costume in such a way that they became a bit more seasonally appropriate.

Just a bit over a month out, the winners of the contest have been announced, and it takes only a quick glance at the artistry involved to see why. Bases were transformed from fortresses of solitude into... well, they were still sort of fortresses of solitude, but now they had appropriate decorations hanging from the icicles. Meanwhile, characters were transformed into crime-fighting ski bunnies and workshop elves. Giving City of Heroes players a chance to work their creativity almost always results in some excellent material, so feel free to take a look at the official page listing the winners and screenshots of each.

Picking numbers for a contest always defaults to something familiar - your zip code, your birthdate, the number of times police have been called to your house because you were shouting so much the neighbors thought you were assaulting someone. At least that way you can blame cosmic randomness instead of just guessing wrong. The many residents of Final Fantasy XI can start blaming fate, as the winning numbers for the Moggy New Year Bonanza have been announced, right on schedule.

In ascending order, the winning number for the Rank 5 prize is 8, Rank 4 is 9-6, Rank 3 is 7-3-3, Rank 2 is 1-1-6-4, and the supreme Rank 1 winning numbers are 5-8-8-4-6. The official site has assembled a small chart showing both the winning numbers and the number of winners of each prize category. Over five hundred thousand players won the Rank 5 prize, narrowing to only 43 people winning the top award.

Of course, there's a limited timeframe to pick up your prize -- anything not claimed by February 15th will be lost forever, so it's best to move in quickly to pick up your reward. Congratulations to those who won, and for those who didn't, well, a Shadow Lord statue isn't that cool.

Our friend and EVE Online fanatic CrazyKinux periodically runs an EVE Blog Banter, where the growing number of bloggers focused on the sci-fi MMO tackle discussion topics. The end result is usually some well thought-out commentary or lively debate about an aspect of the game experience. His latest Blog Banter has a different twist; it's actually a contest where the top ten winners can score merchandise from the official EVE Store. (The prizes: $100 worth for first place, $50 for second place, $25 for third and fourth, fifth through tenth place winners will each get 14 days of EVE time.)

Entering is pretty simple. CrazyKinux asks: "What is it that makes this particular virtual world so enticing, so mysterious and so alluring that we keep coming back for more. Why is EVE one of the very few MMOs to see continuous growth in its subscribers? To put it simply: Why do you love EVE Online so much?" Answer this question on your own blog while linking back to CK's contest post in your intro, then let him know about it in his contest post's comments. Be sure to check out the contest rules first, but you've got until January 31st to enter. Winners will be announced on February 5th; the contest will be judged on the merits of quality, structure, approach, and originality.

So there you go -- if you're an EVE Online player and a decent writer as well, this could be easy money for you. Good luck to any Massively readers who decide to go for it.

See, this is what happens when we let Seccia write titles for us. Ughs... sorry about that readers. We don't proclaim any victory, nor do we have any rage towards the citizens of Norrath or EverQuest II. We are, as always, unbiased in our viewpoints... unlike some new Dark Elven interns.

However, Seccia has noted that we've received a package today from a member of her elven bretheren, a certain community management elf by the name of Kiara. Enclosed were two pieces of a shattered tablet, one named "Victory" while the other was entitled "Rage." We're not sure what this whole thing will form once it's put together, but we do know that other fansites have more pieces of the tablet. (Oh, Dark Elves and their puzzles.)

We've put the pictures of victory and rage after the break, so good luck with assembling the tablet and we can't wait to see what it reveals!

If you've been involved in a beta over the last several weeks and haven't been boldly going where no gender-neutral-pronoun has gone before, you've probably been taking a look at Kung Foo!. Statistically speaking. Maybe you're in on the Hello Kitty Online: Rise of Cthulhu beta testing, we're not sure. Anyway. If you have been testing Kung Foo! recently, you'll be familiar with the volume and intensity of events that the community team has been organizing to keep the beta tests as engaging as possible. In preparation for Closed Beta 2 next week, they've announced another testing event... and the rewards are cold, hard cash.

Well, cold, hard, item-mall cash. Which is still a nice freebie.

The servers will go live for Closed Beta 2 on January 26th, 4 PM PST (7 PM for those of us running on EST), and the event will start an hour later at 5 PM PST on Realm 4. The official blog for Perfect World Entertainment will update this blog entry with a screenshot hinting at where the GM is hiding. Be the first to find him, and you win $50 worth of Zen currency. Easy money, isn't it? And a perfect way to get more excited about the game's launch when testing starts.

It's always nice to see members of the MMO community reaching out to help one another, and the nice folks over at the LotRO Reporter took it upon themselves to encourage people do to more of it and win a few nice prizes in the bargain. (With plenty of help from Turbine, who provided the prizes.)

About a month ago, they introduced a contest: give a little of your time doing a random act of kindness for someone in-game. Help them through a quest, craft something for them, that sort of thing. Send in a description, and be entered in a drawing to win a Siege of Mirkwood combo pack.

The two contest winners were announced today, and their stories can be found here. (One of the winners profited even more than expected, in the form of a new friend in addition to her prize.) It's always nice to see players bringing something positive to the community, so our thanks go out to Turbine, LotRO Reporter, and everyone who entered for making Middle-earth a nicer place to be.

The game might be no spring chicken, but Final Fantasy XI is still an overall success, and has more than a few accomplishments under its belt. It's a successful MMORPG on a console, has its own fan convention, has eight years of history, and clearly has made enough an impact to have two subsequent Final Fantasy games with clear ties to it.

All that being said, though, it's possible that you may still not have played it, despite a variety of excellent deals available. If you fall under that header and want an excuse at checking it out in anticipation of Final Fantasy XIV, or if you're a longtime fan hoping for a unique piece of memorabilia, Square-Enix is giving away an excellent little incentive.

Register as a Square-Enix member by February 22nd, and you have a chance to win one of four copies of the Final Fantasy XI Ultimate Collection -- signed by the game's producer, Hiromichi Tanaka. Fans eagerly anticipating Final Fantasy XIV will likely recall that registering for the game's beta also required a member account, so this only further sweetens the deal. If the chance sounds appealing, it's well worth the few minutes it takes to register.

Part of the Solorius celebration in Aion included the Solorius Video Contest, an opportunity for fans to show off how they were celebrating Solorius, and compete for some extremely generous prize packages. The contest deadline was January 5th, and from then on it was up to the Aion staff to sift through and pick a winner: "On Wednesday, 12 members of the Aion team were locked in a conference room to view the videos that made it to the finals. It wasn't easy, but we're happy to announce that we've chosen our winners. Drum roll, please!"

The three winners displayed not only nice editing skills, but some pretty impressive vocal talent as well. The winning videos can be seen on the Aion site. (Aion staff members also treated us to a few of their favorites that didn't make it into the top three, so make sure to take a peek at those as well.) Our congratulations to the winners!

We know what you're thinking. You're thinking that Dragonica Online is offering you a 2,500 dollar gift card to their own game. Well, that's what we thought too, but we were wrong. 100% wrong!

The Dragonica Online Water Series Game Card Sweepstakes (hereafter referred to as "the contest" because that's one huge name) is offering new players and old players a chance at a very sweet 2,500 dollar gift card to Best Buy, allowing you to stock up on all of your electronic needs! All you need to do to enter is simple -- simply sign up for a THQ*ICE passport, download Dragonica Online, and then log into the game before January 31st. Really, it's that simple. If you're already a Dragonica Online user, simply logging in will enter you into the contest.

Five first place winners will be grabbing a $25 limited edition Dragonica Online Water Series Game Card while 10 second place winners will find themselves the proud owner of a $10 limited edition Dragonica Online Water Series Game Card. We don't know what's so "limited edition" about them, but who wants to turn down game credit for logging in?

Remember, the contest only runs until January 31st, so make sure to log in to participate! Also, THQ*ICE runs the North American version of Dragonica, so sorry in advance to our friends overseas -- this one's not for you guys.