It's that time of year again: here's your MMO Halloween event round up

It's that time of year again, when MMO developers release spooktacular updates filled with ghosts, ghouls, pumpkins, werewolves and the like. Because of this, we thought we'd provide players with a small, non-comprehensive update on the various festivities.

DC Universe Online: The Witching Hour - now until November 2: Klarion has returned to Gotham City. All previous years' activities and rewards are back, including the Midnight Masquerade. You can access it under your Events tab in the On-Duty menu. New base items, feats, a Boo trinket, pet and a redecorated Vault are also in the mix. There's also a Halloween sale going on at the moment.

Dragon's Prophet: The Styx Festival - now through November 6: The Styx festival contains six achievements to unlock and rewards such as a companion, new costumes, transformation potions, and new items in the marketplace. If you head over to the forums, you can have a look at some of the drops as well as a guide to the event posted by the community manager.

Final Fantasy 14: All Saints Wake - October 20 - November 3: The Continental Circus is on tour and it is hosting a costume parade on the Steps of Nald. Volunteers will be "transmogrified into fantastic forms matching those of the performers," and the parade will be led by a member of the troupe dressed as an ogre pumpkinhead, the legendary Great Gourd. Godriquelain is suspicious over the Continental Circus's motives, so you will need to speak with him outside Mih Khetto's Amphitheatre. Players who complete all of the quests during the event will be handed two new types of face paint.

Guild Wars 2: Blood and Madness - started October 21: The annual Blood and Madness, Halloween festival returns for two weeks which means the realms of the Mad King is back, and players will be facing off with the son of King Oswald Thorn a.k.a the Bloody Prince Edrick. Players will gather in Lion’s Arch to participate in "tricks, treats and terrible jokes," and they will also venture to the northwest corner of the Black Citadel for two story instances. The entire list of patch notes with more information on the event can be found here.

EverQuest & EverQuest 2: Nights of the Dead - now through November 5, November 3 (respectively): In EQ1, various Nights of the Dead themed Helms will be dropping and seasonal items such as a hat, robes and other items will land on the marketplace. Most of the events are the same as previous years. The blog post is rather extensive and you can have look at it here. In EQ2, several new features including a Candy Crusher achievement and a new annual quest “A Dream By Any Other Name" have been added ro the festivities. New holiday merchants will be selling house items, dungeon spawners, petamorph wands, and appearance weapons. Bounding Orc Skeleton and Shadowy Lich costumes are also available.

PlanetSide 2: Nanite of the Living Dead - now through the end of the month: Players will need to head to Auraxis to staunch the tide of space pumpkins shot up with growth hormones. Blow the things to bits and bring the seeds to a designated SPS-drop off zone to claim a reward. These seeds can be used to purchase new season masks - which can only be equipped while the event is going on, unfortunately. These masks include: three Inferno Skull types, other skulls, an Ichabod Crown, Frankenstein Facepaint and more.

Lord of the Rings Online: Harvestmath - October 21 - November 2: Once again, players will be venturing into Bilbo's demented basement maze in order to open treasure chests (I want that red skeleton horse drop damn it!), bring lost hobbits to safety and chastise a few of them for dressing up and scaring folks. As usual, players will be gathering tokens for completing quests which can be used to purchase cloaks, maps, masks and the Spooky Steed of the Bat.

World of Warcraft: Hallow's End - now through November 1: In this event, players will strive to defeat the Headless Horseman, visit inns and cities for items such as masks and costumes, and to eat candy. Currency such as Tricky Treats can be used to purchase candy and other rewards which are collected them by completing quests, and opening pumpkins which are located in various inns throughout the game world.

Neverwinter: Call to Arms Pit Fight - ended October 20 - Well, hopefully you played and enjoyed killing werewolves and were able to acquire Medallions of Battle and purchase the Shadow Wolf Mount. There was able the option to purchase a purple-quality Shadow Wolf Mount from the Zen Market which could be unlocked for all player characters. There's also Masquerade of Liars event slated for October 30 -November 3 according to the game wiki, and kindly pointed out to me by tomas leiva in the comments. Arc Games has yet to post any information on the event in its news section, so you may want to keep an eye on the website.

Star Wars: The Old Republic: Rakghoul Event - starts October 28: According to Swtor_Miner a Rakghoul event is in the works and will reportedly go live next week. An event on Voss looks to be coinciding with it, according to some timestamps hidden in the client files. I'll keep an eye on things for you.

RIFT: Autumn Harvest - tentatively scheduled for early November: Since the event doesn't start until next month, we're going to assume for now Autumn Harvest 2014 will be similar to last year's event. In 2013, players were graced with The Fae dispersing loot, artifacts, and other goodies which they “borrowed” from Telara. Portals acorss the game world will port players to the the Realm where they can find Halloween-themed rifts with pumpkins. There's also the Monster Mash Black Garden Warfront which offers boosts to various character attributes and spectral mounts will be available.

Star Trek Online: Hearts and Minds - tentatively slated for October 30 - November 1: These events take place on every Friday the 13th and on Halloween, during which players will be investigating the Donatu Prime Lunar Research Station. Apparently there's some shady research being performed by the Vulcan Doctor Sibak.

Elder Scrolls Online - It really needs one [Opinion]:  While Elder Scrolls lore doesn't really support the idea of Halloween, and Zenimax Online hasn't announced any such festivities, if you look over the list of holidays celebrated across Tameriel, it could be incorporated rather easily. According to lore, Frost Fall coincides with the month of October with three events transpire across the land.

• There's the Witches Festival on Frost Fall 13th which finds those who practice sorcery clashing with the more religious residents. Those who practice the arcane arts meet outside the city limits and either create or summon creatures. Over in Daggerfall, the citizens celebrate Summoning Day for Mephala. Imagine the chaos players could create with such an event! Creatures wandering all over the place, players being asked to choose which side to fight for: the religious group or the arcane wielders. Event quests and subsequent rewards could be created for each side.

• Frost Fall 23rd is known as Broken Diamonds day to commemorate Empress Kintyra Septim II  who died in the dungeons of Glenpoint thanks to orders from Uriel III. While this is considered a day of "silent prayer," surely some sort of foul deed could potentially muck things up and players would be tasked to stop such disrespect.

• Finally, there's Frost Fall 30th which is the Emperor's Birthday, and according to lore, the most popular holiday of the year. Traveling carnivals popped up all over the place, and "aristocrats" participated in an annual Goblin Chase on horseback. In 4E 171, the Great War started when Emperor Titus Mede II refused a Thalmor ultimatum, so the festival has pretty much fallen to neglect. It could be resurrected though, easily, and this holiday sounds more like something which could eventually be implemented for Halloween.

This is just my opinion on how The Elder Scrolls Online could incorporate real-life events into the game while still adhering to lore. Granted, ESO takes place during The Second Era which was also the Interregnum period, 324 years before the"classic Elder Scrolls era; 723 years before Arena; 757 years before Oblivion; and 958 years before Skyrim," so I may be waaaaay off on my timeline. I'm into the lore, mind you, but the whole timeline confuses the hell out of me. Therefore, my suggestions probably wouldn't fit with the timeline, especially since the Thalmor didn't go all Spanish Inquisition on the residents of Tamriel until after the Oblivion Crisis and the eruption of the Red Mountain.

So while I'm 90% sure I'm totally off my timeline with the examples mentioned above, the fact of the matter is there are events contained within the lore which could potentially match up with real-world events. Because of this, there's no reason why the developers of ESO couldn't include seasonal events.

My crazy ideas for ESO aside, there are plenty of MMOs out there to play, so my list isn't comprehensive. If you play an MMO I didn't include and it's hosting a fun-filled event, drop a link in the comments so your fellow readers can join in on the fun.