For some strange reason, Aion just can't seem to get it right with their holiday in-game events.

Sadly, however, Aion's next two events would not be so well received as the Solorius Festival. Their third event, celebrating Valentine's Day, fell on a double experience weekend and gave every player a heart-shaped headband. In terms of actual events - there were none. Instead, NCsoft decided to offer Valentine's Day Packages in their store for $9.99 USD per package. Unfortunately, it was soon discovered that all of the contents of the package, aside from the unique red or pink dyes and the flower-themed headband, could be easily gotten in-game for less than 50,000 kinah. Interestingly, the Aion Community Team did have a small event on each server for players that helped Jefnyerk find his lost love, Dianyerk, with approximately 12-15 players per server received Pink or Red dyes as a result of these impromptu events. Unfortunately, there is a saying that the sign of a content player is a silent player, and this little known fact was drowned out by the cries of others.

If the Valentine's Day Event was a bit of a letdown, however, thousands of players agree that Aion's last event, their St. Patrick's Day event, might qualify to be even more disappointing, as there was no double experience weekend to correspond with it. During this particular event, players were told that Fergus McGreedy, an incredibly rich little leprechaun, would be giving out his hoarded gold to tricky players who could disguise themselves in green. Sadly enough, the entirety of the St. Patrick's Day event was for GMs to spawn high level raid bosses in the middle of towns, who promptly wiped out all players under level 50. As well, green dye was given out to players at the beginning of the day, but it was not necessary for the event, and while these raid bosses dropped some very nice loot, only the groups who killed them could get the items dropped, with many impromptu party leaders simply stealing the items and disbanding the groups.

Ultimately, should the quality of an MMO be judged on its in-game events? Probably not - but it does tend to play out badly with an already critical player base. Of course, other MMOs, like World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XI have both had their fair share of absolutely horrendous in-game events (zombies, anyone?), so it's really not fair to focus too much on some of Aion's event-related problems. In fact, on a more positive note, players are still holding out a cautious form of hope for this Easter Weekend on April 2nd to the 5th, and if nothing is planned for next week, perhaps we, here at ZAM, can give some tips as to what makes for a fun-filled in-game event.