With the Holiday Event coming....Follow

I'm kind of curious what has been everyone's favorite and least favorite events that we've had so far.

I guess for me the Summer Fest was my favorite. I loved how it was designed so you could meet new people. I made a lot of new friends doing those dungeon runs with them, and even more new friends doing the fish scooping. It was just nice and peaceful.

The Halloween event drove me insane. I watched people scramble to make the most possible profit on foods. People hide info about where to get cheaper foods. And it was just too random to be any fun after the first night, for me.

In between for me would be the Adventurer's Appreciation Week. It was kind of neat being able to see my personal stats and I still proudly have my certificate on my wall.

Yeah the easter egg was interesting. The fustrating part was those who wanted to sell the eggs instead of trading though.

I loved the halloween event ^^; I sat there shouting where to get grapes and oranges and stuff at NPCs, always after some dork shouted about selling some expensive cookie or chocolate. It Pissed them off, but I couldn't stand by while people were getting ripped off..

"Flying ****, away!"

My least favorite was summerfest.. That music drove me INSANE!

I have to agree with Poekie. The Twinkling Treant event was the best so far. No random garbage to deal with. No jacking up the prices of various foods. Nothing to personally gain from killing the trees. It was all about having fun fighting an enemy so powerful it was ridiculous, all for the greater good of the whole server. It was great to see so many people, both experienced Japanese players and brand new North American players, all teaming up and working together towards a common goal.

Second best was probably the Summerfest event. There weren't too many people trying to take advantage of the event, aside from the few people who were charging to go on the dungeon exploration portion due to being an uncommon race/gender, and the goldfish scooping in the second stage of the event was kind of fun and a nice change of pace.

The events I dislike the most were the Halloween Event, and the Easter Event. The Easter Event caused ridiculous lag in town due to the number of people gathered around the moogles. Then nobody wanted to work together and actually trade the eggs. Instead, everyone started selling the eggs for ridiculous amounts of gil. Overall, a very frustrating event. Halloween was equally frustrating, due to the completely random nature of the rewards, the number of interesting rewards to be obtained, and the poor "drop rate" on the good rewards vs. the Jack-o-Lanterns and Costume effects. Neither event was really fun.

Edited, Thu Dec 2 10:49:49 2004 by Seryn

I too missed the Treant event last year. I had to hold off until the beginning of the year to buy the game because of not having time. I am looking forward to see what this year's is like.

The story behind the event (from what I can remember) was that Windurst created special, magical "Twinkling Trees" to help all the nations celebrate the winter festivities. But something went wrong, and the "Twinkling Tress" awoke and started running amok throughout the world. Adventurers were asked to stop the trees before they caused widespread damage.

In terms of gameplay, there were special event moogles in several areas throughout the world. I was only in my low 30's at the time, so I don't know where all of the Moogles were located, but I ran into Moogles in East/West Sarutabaruta, East/West Ronfaure, North/South Gustaberg, and Jugner. I assume that there were also moogles in at least Meriphataud and Pashhow as well, and there may have been more that I simply never saw. There were quite a few of them, in any case. In each zone where there was a Nomad Moogle, there was a large Treant NM named "Twinkling Treant". It looked just like a regular treant, but it had a little bit of a twinkle effect at the end of its branches as well.

These Treants were ridiculously tough. They were so tough, in fact, that shortly after the event began, the servers were down for maintenance to reduce the total HP that the treants were given. These Treants easily had 1,000,000 HP or more. To make matters worse, you could only engage the Treant if you were under the effects of a Level Cap status that you got by speaking with the Nomad Moogle in the zone. The Level Cap varied with which area you were in. I only fought in Ronfaure and Gustaberg, but the level cap there was Level 20. Once you had the level cap, you could engage the Treant. There was no "claim" on the Treant, and anyone with the level cap status could attack it. It was common for 60 or more people to be fighting the Treant at the same time. While under the Level Cap effect, deaths caused by the Treant had no negative effects. You lost no XP, and no CP.

Basically, it was an all-out war against these trees. You would grab the level cap, buff up, run up to the tree and do as much damage as you could before you got killed. You'd respawn, grab the level cap status, and run at the tree again. After the tree had taken so much damage, it would Teleport itself somewhere else in the same zone. You had to hunt for the tree, then start fighting it again.

Battles lasted a VERY long time. The first Treant I fought in Ronfaure took about 48 hours to complete. By the time I got to the treants in Gustaberg, the battles were going a little faster (more people helping by this point), and took about 24 hours each. There were people fighting the trees constantly. As people would log out for the night, new people in other timezones would log on and start fighting. When the trees in every zone finally fell, a system wide message would be sent to everyone who was logged in, informing the whole server of the victory.

Each server was given a week (Earth time) to defeat all the treants. The reward for defeating the Treants in time was a server-wide Outpost Teleport service. By doing a supply run to an outpost while your country is in control of a region, you gain access to teleport to and from that outpost for a small fee that variest with regional conquest standings. That service is still operational, and was the reward promised for defeating the trees.

My main linkshell was actually formed out of this event. An Alliance of 18 San d'Orians (myself included) who were fighting the second Ronfaure Treant when it fell decided to travel together as a group to Gustaberg to help out Bastok with their Treants. Our alliance ended up lasting several days. I would log out one day, then when I logged in the next day, I would get a party invite into the very same alliance that I had been in the previous day. Eventually, someone bought a linkshell and gave a Pearlsack to everyone in the alliance who had participated in the event. TheTreantAlliance Linkshell was born!

I still remember standing on the hill in Gustaberg when the last tree finally fell. In addition to the Treant event, all the towns were decorated for the holidays, and special Moogles located in each town would hand out gifts to adventurer's once per game day. Often, those gifts were various fireworks, so naturally everyone had a ton of fireworks on them for a few weeks. When the last Treant on Ragnarok finally fell, there were easily 100-200 people gathered in Gustaberg fighting the final tree. The moment it fell, there the number of fireworks being set off by those fighting the tree was phenominal. Countless /shouts and /emotes went on for a good 10-15 minutes, with everyone cheering each other on, congratulating each other, etc. About 30 minutes later, the victory was verified by the GMs, and a server-wide notice was sent out congratulating Ragnarok for defeating the trees, and announcing that the Teleport service would soon be available. This was followed by mount /shouts and fireworks in every zone for several more minutes.

The whole holiday event is easily one of the best memories I have of this game. The satisfaction of getting your full set of AF. The satisfaction of completing missions and advancing the story is great. But nothing compares to the general feeling of accomplishment and comraderie surrounding the Twinkling Treant event.

Edited, Thu Dec 2 12:44:57 2004 by Seryn

I'm thinking of tying this into our ls's holiday event. It will take a little bit of replanning on my part, but I haven't announced full details to my ls yet.

We've been trying to plan events where everyone in the ls can participate in no matter what level, and this is definately the perfect opportunity.

Thanks for sharing your memories of last year. I think this only gets those of us who missed it far more excited.

Oh Lord. I thought Last Years Trees were Laggy in Sandy :o Jeuno will be like the Kazaa of Vana (More then Now).

Awwwww, look at Seryn in her nooblet clothes! How cute!!!! (Like I should talk!) :D

Pretty awesome pics. One question - what about the Jewish players? That's not very politically correct. =/

What I remember was engaging the mob, then suddenly get hit by some crazy knockback attack. And by this, I mean CRAZY! Imagine say, Goblin Rush, amplified by a few times.

My avatar actually flew through the air and hit a tree. My avatar fell face forward, slided a lil' on the ground and then picked himself up. I noticed I had 2 HP left, so rushed blindly in again. Before I could even reach within melee range (I started as WAR), some nasty AoE blasted a whole lot of people away and finished me off.

That was by far the best part ^^ US peeps, JP peeps and Euro's (like me) all working together to get the trees down :)

Logging in, finding the tree and trying to kill it. Log off for sleep/work..while at work checking the boards to see what the status was ^^

Edit: NVM :/ sorry. lol. mislead a little.

Edited, Mon Dec 6 05:03:04 2004 by Lenwei