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Time to switch over your desktop wallpaper, just as your old Lord of the Rings Online calendar is starting to look decidedly past its prime. The Spring 2008 calendars are ready for downloading, covering the months of April through June. We have added the new calendars to our ongoing LotRO wallpaper gallery, and you can get them in ultra-high resolutions from the wallpapers page on the official site.

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.

It's Bristlebane's Day in Everquest II until April 2!

The god of tricks and pranks has a special job for someone (maybe you!). Look for Blat Berisen outside the gates of your home city... The gods are sending evil thoughts into his brain, and only you can retrieve the tinfoil cap he needs to block them out. Will you accept the challenge?

Check out our exclusive gallery for hints to help the quest along -- including amazing shots of the tin cap itself!

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!

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.

The Brew Day holiday is nearing it's end in EverQuest II, and if you haven't completed the holiday quests yet, you soon won't be able to! Thankfully, we've created a guide for you to use for your Brew Day adventures that covers the three available quests and will get you your rewards in no time. One of the new rewards for this year's holiday is the Brew Day Cloak, pictured in the screenshot above. There's also a whole new quest line that wasn't around last year, obtained from the Avatar of Below.

Click on the above picture or the gallery below to check out the guide, or to just flip through the purdy pictures, and raise your stein to Brell!

Though not many Americans can quite tell you why they are celebrating St. Patrick's Day or wear a bit of green. they do love an excuse to head to an Irish pub and drink a Guinness. And this year is no different with the holiday being observed anywhere from March 15 to March 17 this year.

A few MMOs are getting in on the action as well. EverQuest II is celebrating all week long with their pub-crawl inspired Brew Day Festival which has in turn inspired a video parody. And Pirates of the Caribbean Online has turned the seas green as well as offering shamrock tattoos and green hair to players to customize their avatar.

Even Lord of the Rings Online is slipping in its own St. Paddy's Day celebration with a quest that rewards you with a giant size keg during Spring Festival. Tapping that beast gets you so drunk, your character passes out and wakes up in another part of Middle-earth! Better in-game, than in life, eh?

Finally, if Virtual Worlds are more your style, there are sure to be many player run St. Patrick Day events in Second Life. You may have missed yesterday's float parade, but you can always visit virtual Dublin any time of year.

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!"

Brell's Magic Keg is for Ale! The EverQuest II fan video above comes from Mysterious Ranger Productions, and is a parody of the wildly popular song "The Internet is for Porn", from broadway musical Avenue Q. It comes at an appropriate time, with the Brew Festival underway, and certainly gets you in the mood for an EQII pub crawl. If you've never heard the original before, you'll find it after the break, but keep in mind that it's just the slightest bit NSFW.

Erin go braugh, laddie! Aye, it's St. Patrick's day weekend, which means that there'll be lots o' wearing o' the green and probably a little bit of celebrating and drinkin' (for those of age, of course). But being that this is a site about MMOs, there'll probably be a little game playin' as well. So What aRe yoU Playing in the world of MMOs this weekend?

I've been taking the games easy lately -- been trying to make my way into Guild Wars (as a level 5 Necromancer-slash-Monk, but I'm a total newb, so that may not quite work), and while browsing around, I've been playing quite a bit of PMOG lately. With all the invites into the beta, I'm well on my way to level 4, though as a Bedouin, so I'll have to do some mining this weekend to get back to Destroyer status. And while I'm currently waiting for the site to die down, I can't wait to jump in on Warlords Online -- Massively's own Kyle Horner tells me it's just as addictived as Puzzle Quest, and boy did I love me some XBLA Puzzle Quest (can't wait for Galactrix, either).

So what are you playing this weekend, in among all of the Irish celebrations? Leave a comment below and tell us what you're up to!

Previously on WRUP...

Sunday is EverQuest's ninth anniversary, and in honor of the event the development team is rolling out the annual 'Fabled' content! The Fabled event takes high level content from the days of yore and makes it once again relevant for today's players. It features great loot, full-on nostalgia, and a fantastic reason to celebrate almost a full decade of MMO greatness.

We have our own way of celebrating great events like this, and it lead us to speak with Mr. Travis McGeathy, the lead designer on SOE's classic title. We had the chance to talk with him about this year's addition to the Fabled event - the mighty Planes of Power. We look back over the last few expansions to EverQuest, and talk (a little bit) about the next expansion due to hit the world of Norrath. In his words, what they're work on right now "may shock people a little bit". Want to know more? Check out our full interview with the lead designer on this increasingly venerable game below the cut.

The EverQuest II team sent over a guide for players looking forward to this year's fantastic Brew Day event. The Festival starts today, and runs through to next Friday, the 21st. Players who participate can snag themselves a Tumpy Tonic bottle for their house, and talented videomakers who create a feature for the Brew Day video contest could win a real Tumpy Tonic glass!

To make your Brew Day extra special, check out the official Tavern Guide, which lists player-run restaurants and bars. These establishments will be celebrating the event in high style, so check out the guide or read below the cut for directions to a bar on a server near you.

A brief reminder, dear readers, that Lord of the Rings Online has been updated to Book 12 Patch 1, and that means that "Bullroarer's Challenge - Advanced" is back in the game. Remember to finish the quest for your Inn League Keg before the end of the Spring Festival, so that you too can enjoy being plastered beyond the state of consciousness, and find yourself in an exciting new location upon awakening.

If you need to catch up on the pre-requisites for the advanced challenge, our Spring Festival guide has you covered. The only step not featured is the one that has just been re-added, and it's simply a more strictly timed version of the drunken fence hopping you will have already completed to get that far. Good luck!

This Sunday is the ninth anniversary of the landmark Massive game EverQuest. The official EverQuest blog has a short announcement about the event, hinting at the festivities that will be unlocked over the coming weeks to celebrate the game's longevity. As in previous years, the developers are revamping content from a previous expansion to make it relevant in today's raiding environment. For 2008, the Planes of Power are seeing a resurgence, with loot and challenges equal to the content from the most recent expansion, Secrets of Faydwer. Along with challenging raid encounters, all players will be able to participate in a treasure hunt started by the NPC Garin Tvalish in the Plane of Tranquility.

In honor of the anniversary, the community team is holding a video contest to celebrate. Budding machinima artists can check out the official rules to see what they're looking for. Essentially it sounds like the team wants a high-class trailer, showing a variety of zone and NPCs - giving non-players the best look at the EQ of today as possible. Winners could snag a camcorder or digital camera, and the top two participants will net themselves a unique in-game title for a character of their choice.

Make sure to come back tomorrow for our interview with EQ Lead Designer Travis McGeathy about the anniversary, the last few EverQuest expansions, and the future of this online world.