Massively^™

Springtime brought many events to our favorite MMOs and Massively was there to report on them. From St. Patricks Day to Easter to April Fools, there was no end to seasonal fare. Click the images below to take a tour of the pictures and places of Spring 2008 in MMOs.

Easter
More event coverage after the jump.

I think it's safe to say we've grown accustomed to certain holiday events in our MMOs these days. Most of these are global, non-denominational events, or at least try to be. Guild Wars' Wintersday is a prime example of this. We have an event celebrating the battle between two powerful deities in the GW world, peppered with the old recognizable favorites like candy canes and snowmen. It's full of win in every possible way.

While many of you may have spent yesterday coloring eggs or biting the ears off chocolate bunnies, many people celebrated the holiday virtually in Second Life. For those of you too busy in real life to enjoy virtual life, we've captured some of Second Life's Easter celebration in pictures. Visit giant bunnies, hunt for eggs, join in an Easter parade, and color eggs of our very own all without leaving the safe confines of your browser! So what are you waiting for? Let's get started!

It seems like during the holidays or parties, people love to gather together and do a "photo" (screenshot) together. Our reader Jose found one such group, and being a bit of a game 'photographer' himself, snapped this excellent screenshot for us. With today being Easter Sunday, many folks will be gathering together in brightly-colored finery with friends and family. So we figured what better time to share this festive screen! Jose writes:

[This is] a line up for the "photographer" during a party. Funny things people do in LotRO.

We've seen screenshot lineups in many, many games, really. But half the fun of gaming is doing funny things with friends -- and occasionally snapping screenshots of them!

If you have any great, funny, interesting, off the wall, beautiful, exciting or (insert adjective here) screenshots, then let the world share in your moment! Grab those screens, pop them in a mail with a short blurb about what's in the scene, and send them to us at oneshots@massively.com! No game too old or niche, no screenshot too large.

Seasonal events are often the most popular in-game events in many of today's MMOs. But each game's designers have to find a way to slip these real world celebrations into the lore and mechanics of their persistent worlds. Let's look at this year's crop of Easter events transmogrified into online fun.

Some designers do little more than blatantly throw in eggs hidden in the bushes such as World of Warcraft's Noblegarden. You can spend the day in the newbie zones and collect eggs that hold minor items. Not very much to this, especially considering the way Blizzard has been revamping other seasonal events like Hallow's End into something drool worthy.

Fortunately, our friends at WoW Insider have created a gallery of the 25 best Easter Eggs of WoW. Not the kind of Easter eggs mentioned above, but the little hidden in jokes placed in the game by the designers from 'Snakes on a Plane' visual gags to Clint Eastwood nods to 'Firefly' shout-outs.

You can begin your tour of these hidden gems by clicking on the first picture below, check out what little Noblegarden does have to offer in the second gallery or continue to read about Easter events in other MMOs after the jump.

For those not paying attention to their calendars, Easter is nearly upon us (it's early this year!) and that means another year of Noblegarden for the WoW-faithful. Last year's event left a little something to be desired, as Noblegarden wasn't given the same decorative fanfare as some of the more "major" holidays like Halloween or Christmas. It was a one day event and players had to travel all the way back to the starter areas to join in the hunt for multi-colored eggs, and the rewards, usually just a piece of chocolate or a couple copper, were hardly worth the effort.

While we've gotten no promises that things have changed substantially this year, Noblegarden is back again and once more we are diving into it hoping that Blizzard has seen the error of their ways and made the event both more festive and rewarding for players. About the only change we noticed in the description on the official page was that eggs would be scattered around the major cities this time around, so it should be interesting to see if foot-traffic picks up. If nothing else, we're hoping we can at least get our hands on one of the holiday costumes (an Easter Dress or pieces of a Tuxedo) without searching through eggs for half the day.

While Brew Day, Noblegarden, and even LOTRO's new Spring Festival are all well and good, for me the ultimate Easter event in a online game has to be the Egg Hunt in Final Fantasy XI. The official FFXI site has up notes on the rewards you can garner for participating in the event this year - the very beautiful eggs pictured above with a very sleepy Moogle. How to actually participate in the Eggstravaganza event isn't on the site, but the event hasn't changed overmuch in the many years it's been running. For hints, Allakhazam has guides for the 2005 egg hunt and the 2007 egg hunt.

Square/Enix is a big fan of seeing user experiences applauded and praised, so for most of the month they've been accepting player stories. Ostensibly connected to the Egg Hunt event, many are anecdotes from humorous events in the lives of Vana'diel citizens. They're fun to read - especially because they're short: "My first day consisted of punching a bee until I figured out how to equip a weapon, staring at a door until someone opened it, and following people around to find my moghouse!"

NCsoft has something funtastical (see what I did there?) in mind to celebrate the coming of Spring in Lineage II. According to their press release: 'Adventurers all across Aden and Elmore will soon be able to travel to the curious shores of Fantasy Isle (sans the long swim), where its diminutive inhabitants are celebrating the season with a new event called Bunny Money!'

They don't say what the event actually entails (you'll have to visit their homesite on March 7th to find that out), but some of the prizes are S-grade armor, high-grade Soul Crystals, shadow Agathion bracelets, and more! If those sound enticing to you, you'll still have to wait until Friday to find out how you'll get them.

Call me a nostalgist, but when I read the words 'diminutive inhabitants' in the same sentence as 'Fantasy Isle', all I can hear in my head is 'Da plane, boss! Da plane!'