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We've got a hot tip directly from WoW Insider for you this morning. If you've got a currently active World of Warcraft account, and there's any way at all you can spare the time tomorrow to log in, do it! Tomorrow is WoW's fourth birthday, and Blizzard is handing out some presents for all the players logging in on this auspicious occasion! Simply logging your character into World of Warcraft tomorrow will net you an achievement and an in-game pet. The pet is the cutie-patootie shown above, a "Baby Blizzard Bear".

The achievement is a one-of-a-kind can't-get-it-any-other-way feat of strength achievement. Other achievements handed out for this include other date-based events, things players will never be able to get again. So, if you want to add another one of these once-in-a-lifetime notches to your belt, make sure to log in tomorrow! Oh, and Happy Birthday World of Warcraft!

Many thanks to everyone that participated in Massively's First Birthday giveaways! We had over a dozen giveaway posts, hundreds of prizes, and thousands of commenters - a darn successful party, if this blogger says so himself. As of this morning the last giveaways closed, so you're going to have to wait a bit before you can participate again. Thankfully you won't have to wait too long; we'll be joining WoW Insider in doing Wrath of the Lich King giveaways on launch day! Make sure to check those out.

For those of you that entered, we're going to need to ask for a little patience. We've got to randomly choose winners for every giveaway, combing through our thousands of comments. Prizes should start shipping out to winners starting late this week, and many winners will find that their prizes can arrive by email. That makes everyone happy!

Thanks again to everyone that participated, and we hope you'll stay with us for another year of MMO news at Massively.com.

Tomorrow (Saturday the 8th) is the fourth anniversary of the launch of SOE's flagship product EverQuest II! It's been a long road over four very different expansions, with The Shadow Odyssey due just over a week away from now. Even just the changes wrought in patches - everything from epic weapons to an all-new race - are something to be proud of. Tomorrow for the game's fourth birthday proper, the community team is throwing in-game bashes across all the servers!

The official Players site has all the details, and it looks like most in-game parties will be happening at 5pm PST / 8pm EST. Check their full server listing to see what time your party is at, and then hit up Kiara, Amnerys or Grimwell for an invite. Make sure to tell em' Massively sent you!

We warned you. We told you we had a lot of stuff to give away. Even we, though, are marveling at the sheer amount of swag we have on offer this week. This right here is the Massively.com give away Master List. We'll put up a link on the sidebar to this list that'll be up all week (and into next ... shh), and every single giveaway we do will be connected through here. All you need to do is come back to this post at the end of each day to find the links you'll need to enter.

Entering couldn't be easier - just leave a comment on the post with the swag you want. You can enter into each and every contest we run this week, if you want to! Winners are chosen completely randomly from commenters. If you do win, we'll need to ask you for a street address and phone number. Contests are only open to folks 18 or older that are not already employees of Weblogs, Inc. The contest is also open to Canadians ... excluding Quebec. Francophones Désolés! With all that said ... read on for the master list of MMO giveaways!

Happy Birthday, Massively!

Today is both Bilbo and Frodo Baggins' birthday, and to celebrate, Turbine has reinstated the Belated Birthday quest in Lord of the Rings Online. This quest is basically a way for Bilbo and Frodo to get you to deliver their presents to each other, but you get a nifty little musical cracker as a reward.

As you may remember from the books (or heaven-forbid, the movies), this day is the beginning of Bilbo's disappearance from The Shire , so this is a big deal to many of the game's lore buffs and role-players. Even if you're not a fan of the lore though, this quest only happens once a year. It's available to those level 43 and above, and begins in The Last Homely House of Rivendell. Simply run over to Bilbo's Room inside the House and follow Frodo's instructions.

In the MMO genre, celebrating five years of anything is quite a feat. If you think about it, what games were you even playing five years ago? Everquest? Ultima Online? So we acknowledge that the industry is still fairly young, and blogging about it is even younger. This makes Tobold's fifth year anniversary of his MMO blog something to celebrate.

It's a natural fact that blogs come and go. When there's a hot new topic and someone feels passionate about it, they let it all loose in the first few days, weeks or even months, but a very low percentage make it further than that. Tobold is the exception to this, and we respect him for the fine work he's done thus far. The future progression of MMOs and their close relationship with community-driven blogs only makes sense. They go together like tanks and aggro. So here's to many more years of Tobold, and many more years of blogging about MMOs. Cue sappy music.

Funcom's other MMO, Anarchy Online, has just had its seventh birthday. A number of the people that worked on the game got together to make a video that looks at AO since its beginnings, including Morten Byom, Craig Morrison, Ragnar Tørnquist, Colin Cragg, and indeed, Age of Conan's game director Gaute Godager.

To make sure that everyone is digging the anniversary vibe, there are various freebies up for grabs, most in keeping with the theme of "seven". All current subscribers will receive 700 paid points and 7 buddy keys. Those on free accounts have the chance to upgrade to the full game for $7/€, and will get 7 days free play time included . On top of this, a party planner NPC is giving away all sorts of items in-game. Last, but not least, there is an AO-themed gaming PC from GameRigs.com to be won -- check out the details at their website.

If you could have any birthday wish, what would it be? Would it involve something extra special like an in-game event in Tabula Rasa? How about if the NCsoft European Community Coordinator showed up too? And what if she spawned countless high level Bane within Foreas Base for you and your friends to have their own special shooting gallery within a safe zone? It sure beats Pin the Tail on the Donkey!

How many MMOs do you know that would do something like this for a fansite owner? I'm sure you could count them on one hand, but even in an unofficial appearance, it was extremely generous of Avatea to attend this small event for John, the owner of Tabula Blogger. Be sure to check out Tabula Blogger's post concerning more information on the event, including screenshots and an exciting video of the party-goers taking down some high-level Bane inside the base!

Yesterday was the ninth anniversary of the original EverQuest, and the official EQ team blog has up a unique image that puts the whole history of the game together into one fantastic timeline. Even if you weren't online over the weekend for the 50% XP bonus, you can still participate in the Fabled Planes of Power content - it runs through April 16th.

If you missed it at the end of last week, we had a lengthy interview with lead designer Travis McGeathy about the anniversary event. We also chatted about the game's recent history, back to the Serpent's Spine days, and snag a few tantalizing hints about the future of SOE's oldest game.

For an extra treat, check below the cut for an anniversary video that does a great job of making EQ look ... pretty cool, actually.

Yesterday marked the second anniversary of Turbine's Dungeons and Dragons Online! Given the amazing new content they've been rolling out recently, there's certainly a lot to celebrate. A recent newsletter highlighted some of the game's newest projects, including a referral program to get friends and family involved and the very well-received Module 6 content. As a present to the players, the community team has dropped a few select tracks from the official DDO soundtrack onto the players site. (My favorite is the 'Tavern Rock volume 1' track.) I definitely hope they release more of these selections in the future; I love MMO music.

They're also offering up a new payment offering to honor the game's anniversary. For a limited time you can up a subscription, or have your subscription switched over, to paying only $9.99 a month. There's always a catch though, right? You have to sign up to pay for six months of service upfront, at a total cost of $59.94. That saves you about $18 that you would have spent on the service otherwise. Kind-of-weak payment offering aside, I heartily respect the work the Turbine folks are doing on that game. Say what you will about its place in the Massive genre, the game has its charms.

Well wishes are in order for the newest addition to Sony Online's family of Massive games. Vanguard turns one year old on January 30th, and the dev team is celebrating with in-game goodies for the players. Essentially, every character will be able to choose their one-year anniversary gift by deciding which of the game's three 'spheres' they want to explore.

Adventurers will want to grab Avarem's Messenger Bag, which is not only a handy backpack but increases the running speed of the user. Diplomats will grab for Jansan's Valise of Ages, a satchel that increases their Presence in the diplomacy mini-game. Crafters, finally, will go for Silius' Enchanted Utility Pouch. Another container, this will increase the base crafting attributes for those who carry it.

Veteran Vanguard players can expect to see titles entering the game soon, allowing folks who have stuck it out the entire time to show their Telon pride. The developers plan for there to be cake available in-world on the day itself, as yet another thank-you to the tried and true adventurers sticking it out in the little game that could.

Thursday was the third anniversary of the launch of Sony Online Entertainment's EverQuest II. In celebration of another year of service, the team put together a retrospective video, interviewing the team about their time working on the game. They talk about the process of making the three currently-released expansions for the game, and give a few tantalizing glimpses of the Rise of Kunark, which is slated for release next week.

They also had cake, as shown in a series of pictures posted to the official EverQuest II website. Happy Birthday EQ2. Nice MMOGing.

While most news surrounding Mythic these days has the words "Warhammer Online" somewhere in the title, today we spend a little time to celebrate their other great fantasy MMO: Dark Age of Camelot. DAoC has recently hit the six year mark, as was recently acclaimed by the game's producer Chris Rabideau in a letter to the readers.

The game still has quite a following after all this time, and it is for that reason that he also took the time to talk about a few changes coming into the game in the coming months. Think of it as a DAoC birthday gift from the devs to the players, rather than the other way around. The devs are adding in an experimental test environment to their server structure. While this isn't the most medieval item to bring to a birthday party, it will enable the dev team to test some more robust technical elements that their current test server isn't capable of working with.

I was hoping for some party favors and perhaps a hat or two, but I guess a new test server will do, at least for now. But where's the party, Mythic? Where's the party?