World of Warcraft's Public Test Realms have recently begun running an updated build of the Hallow's End event. Among other things, this new build sees the introduction of some new loot for the Headless Horseman. Details are available in the full article.

Hallow's End has come and gone in Blizzard's World of Warcraft, but it's never too late for a Halloween Special machinima starring the very... uhm, wacky murloc named Roberto. Now, Roberto's Halloween Special really stands up to its name as it is a collaboration with guests Mojache, Drewbie, and Macheath.

Check out the crazy video right after the jump!

As a back-to-back holiday treat, Nebu from the official World of Warcraft site has recently announced the winners of both the Blizzard 2007 Pumpkin Carving Contest and the World of Warcraft Hallow's End screenshot event. Photos of the top entries for both events have been posted on Blizzard's official World of Warcraft site for all to see.

Nebu noted the increasing level of creativity and competition with each passing year, and remarked that this year's pumpkin carving contest had fielded "the deepest pool of entries yet." The sixty-five chosen entries for the WoW Hallow's End screenshot gallery, on the other hand, revealed dramatically frightful images of the Headless Horseman, witches on broomsticks, and jack-o'-lanterns in all their sinister glory.

Both the Pumpkin Carving Contest and the Hallow's End event are seasonal holiday events sponsored by Blizzard. Participants are expected to submit the most artistic pumpkins or screenshots they can come up with depicting various themed World of Warcraft or Blizzard-themed Halloween motifs.

If you haven't checked Blizzard's World of Warcraft events calendar lately, perhaps you'd do best to pick up a day planner for managing your World of Warcraft gaming time. Or maybe not.

Everyone's running to the Costumed Orphan Matron for one reason only: the Headless Horseman's playing arsonist again and brave souls want to play firefighter - a firefighting Ichabod Crane in fact, for a flying broom mount and pimped up purples, no strings attached.

First time out in Azeroth this creepy season? Then you'd do best to take on light trick-or-treating escapades with innkeepers and candy vendors, or make Halloween less evil and more heartfelt for two orphans. Or if you're still recording Lament of the Highborne for the nth time, take a breather when the moon's out and join the Wickerman Festival just outside of the Sylvanas Windrunner's capital, the Undercity.

And don't forget your armor and weapons, because your sneaky Horde pals have been up to something fishy (smelling) at the town of Southshore, and the Alliance prefers payback than mopping up. It's all fun and games until someone draws a blade or the event ends, so enjoy your Hallows End while it lasts up to November 1, 2007.

Sure, flying around on a broom might seem kind of weird, but in the spirit of Hallow's End, anything is possible. Blizzard recently chimed in on the creation of this new Hallow's End mount, known as the flying broom, and they clarified some current information related to the tooltip of the broom mount.

According to the commenters on the post we found, they were also basically saying that the flying broom mount lasted for seven days and was a single-use item. Drysc, on the other hand, took some time to amend the information given in the original tooltips found on the PTR servers, noting that there would be far more mileage out of the broom mount than that, as well as some fun new information about the headless horseman that'll appear this year:

We do have the broom mounts for Hallow's End this year. Some people got to see them on the PTRs, they're pretty wicked. The tooltip on them is wrong however, they are not one use only, they do have a 14 day duration though.

I highly recommend checking out the additions when it begins in your nearest "starter" town, the Headless Horseman attacks and ultimate battle with him in Scarlet Monastery graveyard are a lot of fun, easily puggable at 70, and he drops phat purples.

It definitely brings out the Halloween spirit, that's for sure. The only thing missing would be pumpkins that explode for great justice. Of course, this year's headless horseman might just bring that along... you never know.

Blizzard is announcing that as part of the preparations for Halloween, they are now accepting submissions for their annual Pumpkin-Carving Contest. The said event invites contestants to submit pictures of pumpkin carvings based on Blizzard games like World of Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo.

The 10 winners for this event will each receive a pair of Logitech 51 Surround Sound Speaker Systems. Before you get bust out the carving knife, here are some extra contest reminders:

• Most of all, your pumpkins should be original. If they feature original art, even better.
• Your pumpkin must be lit up in the photo. You can show another photo of the pumpkin unlit.
• The pumpkin must be related to one of the Blizzard game universes - Diablo, StarCraft, Warcraft, etc.
• Make sure to send in high quality pictures. Try to take the best picture possible. You might have to read up on how to take night pictures.
• Make sure you tell us what the pumpkin is supposed to be in the caption, just in case it's not clear
• We love humor, and it's always good if you can tie that into your pumpkin
  

Those interested in submitting their best works have until Monday, October 29, (12:00 a.m. PDT) to do so. Now, if you've got your carving all ready for the competition, you can submit it to Blizzard's judges via the Read link we've provided below.

Some days, I can't help but feel the need to look back on parts of my life. Even if some part of that life is spent in a virtual world, there is some aspect of being online that translates into real-world change and somehow, there's also a good chance that whatever changes the real world has effected upon me will inevitably show themselves in how I think and play games.

One thing I wondered about recently was how a good number of online games don't happen to refer to the outside world in creating events for players. Sure, there's Christmas, Halloween, and even the Chinese New Year. With the World of Warcraft expansion, there's even the chance to relive specific historical points previously accessible only through stories, games, and canonical lore. What seems to be lacking, at least in my opinion, is the virtual counterpart of a real-world event in history.

More on the unbearable lightness of being a gamer after the jump.

WoW players must have been having the time of their lives with the in-game Hallow's End celebration. We heard that players can bob apples, wear masks, and do virtual trick or treating to various innkeepers until November 1.

On another note, NCSoft celebrates the Halloween festivities with cool quests. Lineage, for one, will have a monster invasion , while a certain quest in Lineage II may result to a Coffer of Shadows/Omega's Cat purchase for 50,000 adena. Guild Wars will commemorate the event together with Mad King Thorn and his ghouls. Rumor has it that those who want to take a look at this monarch's otherworldly glow will be rewarded with prizes, or if they get lucky, a Halloween gift or two.

No kidding. A lot of MMOs really put a lot of effort in incorporating the usual holiday festivities, and a lot of gamers really look forward to experiencing those. In fact, according to our source, there are around seven million gamers who look forward to gaming holiday festivities (and probably we here at QJ are guilty for being part of that statistic). Honesty, who wouldn't? Not only are there loads of decorations to ogle at, there are cartloads of treats being given away as well.

And although some people think that this is just a marketing ploy to "steal" gamers away from their loved ones during the holidays, we think that these holiday rackets are sure a lot of fun. In fact, some gaming companies even think that these holiday add-ons make the games more grounded on reality:

"The primary purpose of the event is to change the face of the world for a while, which is a driving philosophy behind many of our events," Blizzard representatives said. "We enjoy making the World of Warcraft a more dynamic, living world, and these events certainly help this."

Way to go, Blizzard. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some WoW Hallow's End catching up to do. Do let us know what you think of this, alright?