Guild Wars & World of Warcraft Holiday Offerings

Both Guild Wars and World of Warcraft are offering some special treats for their users for the holidays. Amongst other things Guild Wars offers temporary free usage of its expansion.

As of today, the fantasy world of Guild Wars is officially in full-on holiday mode. From December 7 until December 17, Guild Wars players will be able to explore the territories of the Eye of the North expansion pack free for five hours. Level requirements for the expansion will also be lowered from level 20 to level 10.

If you’ve already purchased Eye of the North, don’t stomp your feet and demand another present quite yet. All players will also receive some nice experience/loot bonuses, including triple experience from all Eye of the North story quests, double gold and experience from playing in Eye of the North maps on Hard, and double chance to receive rare items from chests. New festive holiday items such as Hunter’s Ale and Honeycombs will now drop from all creatures.

World of Warcraft has a selection of goodies.

In addition to the WoW standard snowball fights and other general silliness, this year players will be able to turn their flying mounts into flying reindeer thanks to The Preserved Holly. This item is acquired by completing special holiday quests.

On top of that, puckering up for a Winter Reveller NPC this year will reward you with Handful of Snowflakes, which creates a light snowfall above a targeted player. How sweet.

And… A number of bosses in the Burning Crusade expansion are finding it irresistible to dress up in festive gear and will drop seasonal headgear when defeated. However, they won’t actually start celebrating until December 25.

The bosses include:

* Grand Warlock Netherkurse (Shattered Halls)
* Grandmaster Vorpil (Shadow Labyrinth)
* Exarch Maladaar (Auchenai Crypts)
* Captain Skarloc (Durnholde Keep)
* Nethermancer Sepethrea (Mechanar)
* High Botanists Freywinn (Botanica)

Oh, wait a minute, we’ve tripped over one final new feature – the Mechanotoy. It’s a non-combat pet that can be obtained from under the Winter Veil tree in Ironforge and Orgrimmar.