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Apple updates iTunes Festival London 2012 app
Just because the Olympics are over doesn't mean there's not a lot of things to do in London -- the iTunes Festival, for one. Today Apple updated its app for the festival. iTunes Festival London 2012 version 3.5 adds additional performance and reliability improvements, additional language support, and now the app is available in additional countries. The availability of the app in additional countries is important for those festival attendees visiting London but who don't have a UK App Store account. The 2012 iTunes Festival will run from September 1st to September 30th this year. Over sixty acts will be performing on different nights including Usher, Emeli Sandé, Jack White, Norah Jones, Plan B, and more. Tickets are free, but only available via online lottery. Once again the festival will be held at Camden's Roundhouse in London. iTunes Festival London 2012 is a free download.
The Road to Mordor: All hail the Farmer's Faire!
It's a crazy time for Lord of the Rings Online players. Not only is this the game's fifth anniversary, but there's a new expansion is on the horizon, and Turbine's sliding in its second new festival for the year (I'm counting the revamped anniversary festival because prior to that it was a sad, misshapen thing). Now where are those flying eagle mounts we back-ordered? This week marks the debut of the Farmer's Faire, the game's sixth festival. It's an incredibly odd duck of a celebration, marking neither real-world season nor game milestone. Instead, it's a fun-for-its-own-sake bash involving food, Hobbits, more food, more Hobbits, and acid mushrooms. The sheer number of times LotRO has made me drunk or stoned against my will is tantamount to drug abuse, I say. So let's sift the wheat from the chaff and figure out what parts of this festival are worthy of inclusion -- and what should've been left on the brainstorming table.
WildStar's holidays on display
With real-world summer festivities like Canada Day and the 4th of July fresh on the minds of many gamers, it seems like the right time for the folks at Carbine Studios to talk about WildStar's celebrations. CM David Bass lays out two such holidays for our perusal: Starfall and Foundation Day. Starfall is an Exile holiday that remembers the day that the wandering fleet crossed the galaxy to discover the Eldan planet. For the Exiles, Starfall marks the end of their journey and the beginning of a new home. It's a weeklong celebration that includes plenty of games, including Kiss the Matria (chances are that's a lot less sexy than it sounds). The festival is capped by an enormous fireworks display put on by the Alchemist's Guild. Foundation Day, on the other hand, remembers both the foundation of the Dominion Empire and the establishment of Nexus as its new homeworld. Contrasted with the rough-and-tumble celebration of Starfall, Foundation Day is far more regal and official. After all, speeches are way better than kissing Matrias, right? Both Starfall and Foundation Day come around about the same time each year, and depending on a player's allegiance, she might find herself engaging in a different celebration than her friends.
Ragnarok Online celebrates its ninth anniversary in style
Celebrating the anniversary of Ragnarok Online isn't a new thing -- the team at Gravity Interactive has been doing it every year -- but to help ring in the MMO's ninth anniversary, the publisher is throwing what it calls "one of the biggest in-game celebrations to date for RO veterans!" The theme this year is "Where the Old Meets the New," thrown in celebration of the defeat of the Demon Satan Morroc and the discovery of the New World. Sound like fun to you? Then head over to the game's main site to sign up or visit the game's Facebook page to join the community. [Source: Gravity Interactive press release]
Guild Wars celebrates its 7th anniversary [Updated]
It's that special time of year again! Despite the amount of effort that has got to be getting poured into the upcoming Guild Wars 2 beta weekend event, ArenaNet isn't neglecting the baby game's elder sibling. The Guild Wars site has been updated with some information about festivities for the in-game celebration. From April 24th through May 8th, players will be able to enjoy the time-honored traditions of Guild Wars' birthday celebrations: Players can stroll down the Shing Jea Boardwalk for some festival games, race Rollerbeetles, unlock birthday hats, and collect some sweet, sweet treats. In addition, a new pet is being made available. The Hound of Balthazar can be unlocked for free by visiting Ceira, Sworn to Fire in Embark Beach and then traveling to the Zaishen Menagerie and tracking down the fiery beastie. After the anniversary has drawn to a close, the Hound will still be unlockable, but at the cost of 100,000 Balthazar Faction or 20 golden zaishen coins and 100 gold -- so maybe don't dawdle if you're interested in a shiny new pet. The updated page also promises "drops and activities never before seen in anniversary celebration," so join in the fun to find out what's new! [Update: According to a Gamebreaker TV special, all of the normal weekend events observed in Guild Wars will be running simultaneously for the anniversary celebration!]
The Road to Mordor: Happy fifth anniversary, LotRO!
Great Ghost Bear, has it really been five years? Why... it must have been, although it truly seems like yesterday that a magazine article caught my eye about an upcoming game based on Lord of the Rings. Just yesterday it was, when I called my brother-in-law to tell him that he could drop his World of Warcraft subscription because something better was on the horizon. It wasn't but a day ago that we Founders jumped into the head-start and power-leveled all the way to 15. Let me tell you, those Tuckborough Library raids were brutal back then! So it has indeed been five years since Lord of the Rings Online released, a half-decade of Middle-earth stomping, Brandywine swimming, and Weathertop free-climbing. I can't even believe that this is the third such anniversary that I've covered for Massively; boy, how the time flies. Perhaps to make up for last year's lackluster and flawed anniversary celebration, Turbine's pulled out all the stops to make LotRO's birthday an event to remember. We've got a lot to cover and plenty of fireworks left to shoot off, so let's get to it!
LotRO launches its Fifth Anniversary Festival
Lord of the Rings Online's fifth anniversary is upon us, and Turbine is determined to make it a party to remember! Today the studio has released LotRO's Update 6.1, the centerpiece of which is the completely revamped and upgraded Anniversary Festival. While the anniversary was perceived as a haphazard affair in previous years, Turbine's devs have fleshed it out to rival the other four annual festivals. The focus of the Anniversary Festival is on fireworks and lots of them. There are several new quests to discover, a new fireworks-themed mount to obtain, and beer battles to win. Because reaching five years is a big deal for any MMO, Turbine's also showering players with free gifts if they log in during this period. The gifts range from fireworks to cloaks to a special mount that is reserved for five-year veterans of the game. During the anniversary, monsters will drop special tokens that can be redeemed for a wide variety of prizes. There's also a double-XP weekend coming up, which will run from April 24th through the 30th.
Elsword Harmony Festival features time-limited bonus items
What is Elsword doing for spring break? He's going to the Harmony Festival, of course! Kill3rCombo is hosting a time-limited in-game event for its fantasy action title, and you'll want to get in on said action prior to April 4th in order to grab the bonuses and upgrades. The festival includes free costumes as well as festival pie (the latter of which is used in dungeons to recover half your hit points and remove negative status effects). The devs have also added a few new quests to the mix, and there are new thrown weapons available for use in dungeons as well. There's more, of course, so head to the official Elsword site to get the full scoop. [Source: Kill3rCombo press release]
Double, double your excitement (and XP) with Aion's winter festival
You know what's annoying? When people break out Christmas songs after the holidays. I mean, who wants to hear cheerful songs about winter when we can just wallow in the atmosphere of grey slush and sub-zero days in peace? Stupid cheer, get out of here! We want to drink deeply of the well of seasonal affective disorder! You know what's not annoying? When developers recognize how dull the first couple months of the year are, holiday-wise, and invent their own cause for celebration! Aion is breaking out all the stops with this year's Atreian Winter Festival, and that includes insatiably cheerful penguins and scantily clad avatars. For the next three weekends (starting today), players will enjoy double XP and drops in Aion from Friday at 1:00 p.m. EST until Monday at the same time. There's also an "adorable" -- their words -- Daru fur costume that you can purchase in the game store for $10 and flaunt to all your friends at the lodge after a long day on the slopes.
Faraway crowned at Fantastic Arcade festival
Fantastic Fest took place in Austin, TX this past weekend, and as part of the festivities there, organizers set up a Fantastic Arcade, to show off some of the latest and greatest indie games to hit the scene. There were a few good iPhone and iPad games out there, and in fact one of them took top honors, as Steph Thirion's Faraway (which we're eagerly awaiting on iOS) picked up the prize for Best in Show. Vlambeer's Radical Fishing (which was recently involved in an IP clash with another game called Ninja Fishing) also grabbed an award for "Most Punished for Lack of Ninjas," and is due out on iOS at some point in the future. You'll find the full list of games that won awards at the show in the press release below. It's great to see some popular iOS titles make the grade at an event like this, and boy, if the hype for Faraway wasn't high enough already, this adds even more icing to the cake. Hopefully we'll see the game released to the public very soon. Show full PR text FANTASTIC ARCADE 2011 INDIE GAME AWARD WINNERS HONORED Best in Show Awarded to Little--Eyes' Faraway AUSTIN, TX – September 25, 2011 – Fantastic Arcade, the second annual showcase of independent games from the organizers of Alamo Drafthouse's Fantastic Fest, the world's largest genre film festival, wrapped the four-day event tonight with the Fantastic Arcade Awards Party: Starcade. Fantastic Arcade featured eight Spotlight indie games in the juried competition, each housed in retro-arcade style cabinets and available to the general public for play. These eight titles, along with thirteen additional showcased indie games, were culled from more than 100 submissions. The following is the full list of indie games awards and winners presented: Best in Show: Faraway by Little--Eyes Audience Choice Award: Fez by Polytron Most Punished for Lack of Ninjas Award: Radical Fishing by Vlambeer The Bionic Commando Award for Grappling Hook Excellence Award: Capsized by AlienTrap The "You got 2D in my 3D, or maybe 3D in my 2D" Award: Fez by Polytron The Mandlebrot Award: Fract by Phosfiend Systems The Most Recent Use of Japanese Tradition by Westerners Award: Skulls of the Shogun by Haunted Temple Studios The Implied Cephalopod Intercourse Award: Octodad by Team Octodad The Teach the Controversy Award: Jesus vs. Dinosaurs by Martin Jonasson, Petri Purho "Fantastic Arcade fuses the world of genre film with the burgeoning indie game community," said Mike Plante, Arcade Artistic Director. "Each Fantastic Arcade Spotlight game proved to be compelling, fun, accessible and a blast to play. In fact, the audience reached new record levels of thumb blisters!" Video game industry luminaries Brandon Boyer, Mike Plante and Eddo Stern curated the 2011 Fantastic Arcade. Panel discussions, developer talks and game tournaments were held each day of the festival at The Highball in Austin, Texas.
Gigantic LED wall provides gaming at Sziget Fest, destroys your cred from miles away
We can't think of a better way to promote your company than with a 30 meter high (10 stories) tower filled with all sorts of tech goodness. Vodafone plans on doing just that, with what will be the tallest building in Hungarian festival history at next week's Sziget Festival. This monstrosity will not only be a lookout platform, but it will employ 250 square meters (about 2690 square feet) of LED walls. For what, you might ask? Why, gaming of course -- festival goers can play Rocket Bullet Storm, if they're man or woman enough to risk their gamer cred in front of thousands. If using 1.5 million LED units wasn't enough to entice attendees, the structure will also offer free internet access, charging stations and host DJ sets that last through the night. We can only hope that this will catch on elsewhere, so that our Michael Jackson: The Experience skills can be broadcast for miles.
Tinkerfest returns to EverQuest II
EverQuest II's annual Tinkerfest has begun, and the gnomish festival runs through August 8th. As always Gnomeland Security in the Steamfront Mountains is your headquarters for all things Tinkerfest including exclusive quests, new (and old) rewards, merchants with hard-to-find buyables and new recipes, and a bit of new functionality in terms of quest-related map markings. If you can pull yourself away from EQII's double XP weekend, it's well worth running a few of the festival quests if you're into gnomish collectibles and decor. In addition to the news blurb on the official EQII website, several fansites have exhaustive guides and picture galleries available to help you make sense of all your Tinkerfest options.
'Game Play' theater festival combines gaming and performance art
Brooklyn-area nerds are about to receive a special gift from the cultured world of indie theater. For the majority of July, The Brick Theater will play host to "Game Play," a theater festival comprised of gaming-oriented stage productions, musical performances and interactive performance art, among other things. The schedule is pretty wild and ranges from what you'd expect (chiptune dance parties), to what you wouldn't (nerd-culture burlesque shows.) For instance: Romeoo and Julietet, a modern interpretation of Shakespeare's classic, will be performed entirely within World of Warcraft, while Modal Kombat uses real-ass guitars to control Mortal Kombat characters, as seen after the break. The venue has even turned one event, their Rock Band Karaoke Night, into a fundraiser for Child's Play, granting free admission to anyone with a Child's Play donation receipt. The festival runs from July 7 through the 31, and tickets are available now. Hit the source link to check out the full schedule, but be careful: there are some seriously-almost-entirely-nude naked people on this website. You have been warned!
Bashiok comments on Fire Festival; new Hallow's End surprises
Blizzard has been getting hit with a few complaints since the Midsummer Fire Festival began -- that the holiday was just a stat-bump for the items and was relatively the same event as last year. Even the highlight item, the Frostscythe of Lord Ahune, was part of the controversy. Bashiok took to the forums to discuss the changes that had to happen for the Midsummer Fire Festival to even happen and gave players a clue to confirm the widely held belief that Hallow's End this year will play into the larger story between the Forsaken and the worgen. The Midsummer Fire Festival remained largely the same due to the amount of work that had to go into rearranging fire locations due to the cataclysm, changing around all of the decorations, and generally spending a lot of time switching over from the old world. Bashiok does cop to the fact that the event is more or less the same as last year's, but reminds us that the Midsummer Fire Festival has already had its major overhaul back a few years ago. The more interesting news, however, is that Bashiok says we've got some surprises coming our way with respect to Hallow's End, WoW's take on Halloween. We've been long speculating, based on data-mined items and story cues, that Hallow's End will deal with the continuing story of Sylvanas' march into the kingdom of Gilneas and the worgen's fight to take back their homeland. Plus, who doesn't love the classic Halloween monster movie tropes of zombies and werewolves? Bashiok confirmed that there are changes in store for Hallow's End. To what extent, we do not know. However, I will be looking forward to surprises because, really, I love surprises. I'm a giant sucker for surprises. Bring on the surprises!
Midsummer Fire Festival: Frostscythe of Ahune stats to remain uncool
Things are heating up all over Azeroth for the Midsummer Fire Festival. Well, everything except the Frostscythe of Lore Ahune, that is. Blizzard updated the holiday Ahune cloaks to ilevel 353 for players to grab, but Ahune's trademark staff just got the "scale" upgrade -- it's not really ideal for the classes it is intended for. In fact, it's fairly worthless for intellect-reliant classes. Bashiok responded on the official forums that to make Ahune's Frostscythe an ideal weapon stat-wise would be to dissuade players from getting their weapon upgrade in ZA or ZG. Many players were concerned with the Frostscythe's stats because of its inflated +700 stamina instead of plus intellect, which casters obviously prefer, since stamina has been normalized across gear. To be fair, I think it is completely fine to have this holiday fluff item be a non-ideal, cosmetic item that players can wear for it's on-use effect and prestige-luck. Not every item that drops has to be the ideal, especially during a holiday that is coinciding (potentially) with patch 4.2 dropping. That staff you want to be ideal so badly isn't going to be exactly ideal in week if the patch hits June 28. For now, it was an easier alternative to just scale the item opposed to tinkering around and making something perfect. I'd say just leave it as a fun, unique item.
Breakfast Topic: The Midsummer Fire Festival has begun!
The Midsummer Fire Festival begins today all across Azeroth. The celebration runs from June 21 through July 2. This year, however, the celebration of all things fire has a somewhat different meaning for players. Soon, the tenuous alliance we all have with fire is set on its head, as the very essence of fire himself launches his final attack on Hyjal and the world tree Nordrassil. This is the last Fire Festival that Ragnaros will exist in -- we will most likely defeat him in the Firelands during this festival. For me, the Fire Festival is the final holiday achievement I need for the mega meta-achievement What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been on my warrior, who was created around this time last year when I decided to change classes. The warrior went from orc to goblin to blood elf and finally night elf when I moved over to Alliance to raid with a new group. He's had a shaky year, but every challenge has been met with resolve. The Fire Festival represents my new beginning into a different class, and it is interesting to see how much has changed in a year. But for Ragnaros, King Fire himself, this will be his last. Little fire elementals all across the land who aspire to greatness like Ragnaros will have their hopes dashed and dreams crushed -- the Firelord's end will begin, ironically, while we celebrate fire. What are you looking forward to most about the Midsummer Fire Festival? Are you going to queue up for Ahune right away when the servers come up? If you're not sure what you're doing this holiday, check out WoW Insider's guide to the Midsummer Fire Festival achievements.
The Road to Mordor: Festivals and you -- a love story
It's a shame that Lord of the Rings Online's fourth anniversary will probably be remembered more for being a mismanaged festival event than for the achievement that reaching four years signifies. But things are as they are, and the "Grindaversary" has now gone down in LotRO's history of what not to do for an event. If you're only tangentially tuning in to the LotRO news these days, last week Turbine launched its first anniversary celebration in the game (previous anniversaries were marked only by gift tokens dropping in the world). The celebration was a lesser type of festival that borrowed elements from previous events, namely, the horse races and the beer brawl. Players were challenged to participate in both to gain tokens to acquire special rewards, such as a new horse mount, housing decorations, and cosmetic outfits. The problem was twofold: The tokens were gained so slowly that it took a long time to get enough for even one moderately priced reward, and the only endlessly repeatable activity (the beer brawl) could be failed if you were knocked out of the area by another player. As a result, players heavily protested what should've been a fun time and Turbine ended up with egg on its face. In participating myself, talking with friends, and reading through the many, many responses to the event, I got to thinking about how Turbine's approached festivals over the past year or so and how the studio can learn from this to avoid another stumble.
China's dead affected by iPad 2 shortages of a different sort
In life as in death, it seems, getting your hands on an iPad 2 is no easy feat. Reuters is reporting today that paper replicas of the tablet are selling out in parts of Asia, as revelers prepare to set the things ablaze during China's Qingming festival Tuesday. As is tradition, paper versions of money, clothing, and, yes, consumer electronics are burned as offerings to the dead, and this year Apple's latest slate is apparently all the rage for expired techies -- one shopkeeper in Malaysia said his stock of 300 paper iPad 2s sold out quickly, leaving him unable to meet demand. Sounds strangely familiar, doesn't it?
The Road to Mordor: Fashion show! Fashion show! Fashion show at lunch!
Major patch weeks are always a great deal of fun in Lord of the Rings Online as everyone digs into the new content, looks for hidden gems, and goes on grand new adventures. As much as I appreciate most everything in this week's Echoes of the Dead update, I have to say that, hands-down, the additional outfit slots made me the happiest. Yes, I'm weird, but I can't be the only one who had an inner squeal of joy when Turbine announced that it was going to expand (via the store) the number of outfit spots from two to five. I've always, always loved the outfit system in this game as a way to give my characters a unique and aesthetically pleasing look versus having to stare at the mismatched armor they seem to pick up along the way. In celebration of the additional outfit slots, I wanted to finally dig into the outfit system and look at the basics of Middle-earth fashion: where you get these pieces, how colors come into play, and where you might go for inspiration. So let's put on our finest frippery and strut the catwalk, ladies and gentlemen! (I promise, next week I'll be much more manly. Probably.)
EverQuest II's City of Hate hosts lovely festival
It may be known as the City of Hate, but even such hives of scum and villainy as Neriak get their days in the sun. EverQuest II's monthly city festival rotates to Neriak in March for a week of special events and opportunities to net spiffy rewards. By earning special City Tokens, players have a chance to grab special items that are only available when the festival visits that specific town. For Neriak, this means a wide assortment of cool-looking marble decorations, among other goodies. Complete the stamp collection quest for the event and a usable Norrathian Express Box will be placed at your disposal. The Neriak City Festival will only last through March 7th, so if you're looking to spruce up your in-game house with a few spite-filled decorations, get in quick before it's too late!
