As Halloween fades into a memory of candy, costumes, and cheaply-made outdoor decorations, the MMOsphere slowly closes its doors on the various holiday events. Final Fantasy XI's pumpkin-carving contest on Allakhazam has finally drawn to a close, with the votes in and tallied and the winners determined. And if you doubt that there's a great deal of talent and originality on display with the contest, the excellently-rendered San d'Orian knight charging into battle above wasn't the winner -- they placed fourth.

Third place went to a rendition of the title image for this year's Halloween event, while second place went to Final Fantasy XI's resident mad professor herself. First place went -- quite deservedly -- to this hauntingly well-rendered image of a tonberry in the darkness. The official announcement includes a tally of the votes, but that might not be quite as exciting to casual observers as a gallery of all the entries. Congratulations to the winners, and here's hoping that next year brings still more pumpkin-carving fun for FFXI.

One of the greatest thing about MMOs is the player involvement. Fans pick up a game's story and run with it, constantly coming up with fun new results. This hold true as holidays approach, as games start getting into the festive spirit of Christmas, New Year's Eve, Halloween and their own unique storyline-driven celebrations. Player creativity really shines during special events and everyone benefits from the fun.

Halloween is approaching, and party planning in every game is well under way on both the community relations side and the player side. Game sites are starting to talk of pumpkin carving contests and character costume sales, and fans are planning their parties as well. One of the longest running community events is the fifth annual King and Queen's Horrorween in Guild Wars, but it's not the only player-run party out there by any means.

The list of games and fan events is long, and offers a wealth of spooky fun for everyone, so we want to know: who's partying in your game of choice? Tell us what community events you're looking forward to attending this Halloween!

It's almost that time of year again for Guild Wars fans -- time for pumpkin crowns, squash serums, and Mad King Thorn. Halloween is approaching, and with it comes the fifth annual Guild Wars Halloween art contest.

Entrants are invited to show off their talent by creating a Guild Wars themed Halloween concept. There are no limits or restrictions on what participants can dream up and create -- the contest information suggests everything from creating a costume to decorating your house to baking a cake. As long as there is a Guild Wars theme, anything goes.

Twenty winners will be chosen from all entries. All twenty will receive a Mad King's Guard mini pet (this event marks the introduction of this brand new miniature). The top ten will receive a signed art print from PAX 2008 as well, and the top three will also be awarded the Guild Wars 2 art book, signed by members of the GW2 development team.

The deadline is 12:00 Noon PDT, October 23 -- good luck to all!

World of Warcraft tattoos are probably a dime a dozen, and if you've gotten one, you're relatively safe, because clearly that title's proved to have staying power.

But how about getting permanent ink for a game that's not even officially out yet?

That's what 25-year-old Sweden resident Joakim has done. The support technician for a Swedish internet service provider has gone out and gotten the logo for the upcoming post-apocalyptic MMO Fallen Earth on his leg.

Both Joakim and developer Fallen Earth LLC have sworn that this isn't some coordinated PR stunt. We recently got a hold of Joakim via e-mail, and he explained why he got the tattoo and why he'll never regret it.

I am in love with the Champions Online character creator. I may not have a character past level 8 in the open beta, but I'm already wishing I had more character slots. I guess it's a good thing we can save our costumes!

With the recent GI Joe movie hype, and the simple fact that I'm a ginormous GI Joe fanboy since I was probably 6 or 7, I decided it might be fun to see how close I could get on recreating GI Joe characters from my youth in Champions Online. We've paid homage to this amazing character creator before, but we just can't get enough! Follow along after the jump (warning, large pictures ahead!) to see if you can name the five characters I created. This is not an official competition, and the only thing you'll win is my respect and love. Isn't that totally worth it?

Star Wars: The Old Republic's Fan Friday is back with another week's worth of fan-tastic goodness. Given the enduring legacy of the Star Wars franchise (and we're not just talking films and games here), it's no surprise that Lucas' creation is still one of the pinnacles of sci fi.

But back to The Old Republic. As part of the latest Fan Friday segment on the official site, this week's showcase of what the community has been up to is actually quite revealing. There's a Choose Your Own Adventure and a really interesting tutorial showing how to create your own artwork using (of all things) MS Paint that really shows what this much derided freebie program is capable of. Finally there's a new official poll and a peek at some Trooper avatars.

The Guild Wars Wintersday Art Contest for 2008 has concluded, the work has been judged and the votes have been tallied. This year's winners vary from screen renders to paintings to musical compositions, and they're all amazing.

The grand prize winner of this year's competition is Casondra Logan with her depiction of a Monk holding a snowglobe, guided by the avatar of Dwayna. It may just be the aftereffects of the eggnog talking, but it seems these entries are getting better and better each year. Check out the official announcement over at the Guild Wars main site, and don't forget about the Canthan New Year festivities starting next weekend!

Three Rings, the developer of the Flash-based casual MMO Whirled, has just announced the winners in their new "Design your Whirled" art contest. In conjunction with deviantART, the largest online social network for artists, this contest challenged members to create the best individual or multiple rooms for the game. Because of the success of this first contest, Three Rings has already announced that they're accepting entries for the second contest of the same name.

The top winner was awarded a new 15-inch Macbook Pro and one year subscription to deviantART, while the second and third place winners were awarded Wacom tablets and other deviantART subscriptions. You can view the winning entries by visiting the main Whirled site, and register your own entry for the next contest at the Whirled wiki.

We would surely hate to be the judges at ArenaNet during a recent Halloween contest. Why? Because the entries are all so amazing! In this fourth annual Halloween contest that we first mentioned last month, Guild Wars players and fans submitted their most creative concepts and designs that somehow related the Guild Wars universe with Halloween.

Ten winners were ultimately chosen, with one grand prize (shown above). There were also ten honorable mentions and twenty finalists in total. It's contests like this that truly bring out the amazing creativity in gamers, not just for Guild Wars, but across all games and genres. It's good to see when game studios promote and reward such creativity.

The Reichsman is an enigma. There probably hasn't ever been another character in City of Heroes history whose popularity was so disproportionate to his presence in the game. Game developer Joe 'Hero 1' Morrissey has received frequent requests for Reichsman's inclusion, and yet this (literally) ubervillain has never been mentioned in more than a few lines of text.

Joe even boggled that the players seem to want him so much: 'I checked up and as far as I can tell he's just a line or two on the website and the fact that one guy could have that much momentum behind him. We always get asked, "When are you going to bring this guy out?" It's so funny, because we always like, "Wow, really? Him? Okay."'

So who is this guy, and what's his appeal?

Are you an exceptional artist, with work good enough to save humanity from the Bane? You might just be what Richard Garriott and Operation Immortality are looking for. Just consider this: if the Earth was destroyed by tentacled aliens and the human race was forced to be reborn from stored DNA, what would the new Adam and Eve look like?

This is where you come in. The new Adam and Eve 2.0 Art Contest held by NCsoft allows players to submit their own original artwork for a chance to win a spot on the Immortality Drive. Winners will get their DNA and artwork sent into space with Richard Garriott and stored on the International Space Station as part of mankind's greatest achievements. The selection will also have the opportunity to appear on future NCsoft promotional materials. So head on over to the main contest page for complete details, and good luck!

City of Heroes community relations manager Alex 'Lighthouse' Von Minden doubles up as the editor for a new CoX Fanzine. The current issue is technically Issue 1, the former 'Issue 0' having been released as a preview issue, reproducing material from the Fan Submissions section of the Top Cow comic.

Issue 1 features a spectacular cover by Douglas Shuler, with Back Alley Brawler and Ghost Widow apparently on the same side for once. The background of Cimeroran soldiers can only mean they're among the many Heroes and Villains who've chosen to set aside their differences for long enough to help Imperious make the future safe. Ghost Widow's not looking too shabby for someone who's been dead at least three years, as Back Alley Brawler (the developer) would have liked to affirm.

Keeping in line with a recent hypothetical map created by our very own Michael Zenke, which depicts a geographical equivalent to the MMO blogosphere's most popular sites, Tim Howgego decided it was about time he created one for the World of Warcraft community. This map shows an interesting assortment of sites, including a humorous take on gold farmers and an itty bitty island in the middle of the sea called GM Island.

There is a thorough explanation accompanying the map on Howgego's website, including his reasoning behind the placement of each landmass versus the outlying islands. Even the directional arrangement has a purpose. Curiously enough, we find our sister site WoW Insider occupying a lone island in the murky southwestern corner of the map, although Howgego explains that placement as well. The best part about this map? Everything is linked!

One might rightfully acuse the term "user generated content" of being a rather dry way to describe what is really a fascinating trend in media: the opportunity for "users" to contribute their own creations and have them incorporated into traditionally heavily produced "content." By nature interactive, the games industry is taking notice of the power of UGC, and in a panel yesterday at ION 08 we had the chance to listen to Flying Lab's Troy Hewitt and Linden Lab's Rob Lanphier talk about how user content has been working in Pirates of the Burning Sea and Second Life. Attorney Eric Goldman of Santa Clara University School of Law was on hand to discuss some of the legal issues surrounding UGC, and the panel was moderated by Scott Warner, owner and leader of the intellectual property and technology group at firm Garvey Schubert Barer.

Scott: Troy, do you want to start us off by talking about how user content has been working in Pirates?

Troy: Sure. As some of you may know, we just launched PotBS earlier this year. We have a system in the game where players can create flags and sails for their ships. There's a mechanism to distribute your work and they can actually create and sell their designs as well. Players can also create and model their own ships, and other people in game will be able to use those ships. We have 30 ships now in the game made by players, and these were actually done by only 13 people; so it's a small group of dedicated people creating these ships. With the flags and sails, about 20% of our player base is creating them and a much larger percentage actually use them.