Halloween descends upon your favorite MMOs: spooky stuff you can play this weekend

Halloween is a time for many things.

Halloween is a time for many things. Candy, costumes, vandalism, paganism - you know, wholesome stuff. But Halloween also has its darker side. That's right: MMORPGs - perhaps the most evil, life-devouring game genre in existence. So clearly, it only makes sense that all of them would... OK, I'm done trying to make sense of this.

For some reason, MMOs take to Halloween like machete-wielding psychopaths to teenagers on camping trips. Why? Who knows? But it's stupidly fun, and you get to punch zombies in a videogame. That, like, almost never happens. Find out what the likes of WoW, Rift, World of Tanks, DC Universe, and many more are up to this Halloween after the break.

WoW's brought back Hallow's End, which lets you "corral orphans" to earn candy currency, which is redeemable for holiday themed rewards. Or, if walking children down alleys isn't up your alley, you can light your opposing faction's Wickerman on fire and then rain on their parade with a hail of stink bombs. I guess the orphans are there to correct the karmic balance of you being such a huge jerk . -- Rift's going with the tried-and-true tradition of a real-life costume contest. Winners in each of three categories (terrifying, beautiful, and bizarre) will pick up in-game items - including an owl! Also, Trion released this new Halloween-themed trailer, which is basically the best thing. Harvestmath is in full swing, with Mad Bilbo's Haunted Burrow is leading the charge. You can also win an Autumnfest Steed, which is great, because one can never have too many steeds. The real stars of LoTRO's show, though, are all the player-hosted events, which Turbine has kindly highlighted. Conan's "Nights of Lost Souls" bring two solo quests and one team quest that see you hunting and ultimately having a pleasant tea party with three of the titular Lost Souls. Wait, did I say "tea party"? Silly me. But this is Conan. Honestly, what do you think you end up doing to them? This is already a game about running around in silly costumes; it may as well be Halloween year 'round. So Champions is having a real-life pumpkin-carving contest. Winner gets 1,000 promotional points, with second and third placers taking 500 a piece. The Scarecrow's opened his "dark lair" to all the heroes in DC land. That, er, probably wasn't the greatest idea on his part. You can probably see where this is going: Repeatedly pound the Scarecrow's face into pumpkin mush, collect tokens, and exchange them for Halloween-themed trinkets and style items. Sure, other MMOs celebrate Halloween, but City of Heroes may just trump them all. In addition to a brand new co-op event called Dr. Kane's House of Horrors, there's a two-part (zombie apocalypse and deadly apocalypse) monster invasion event, and good old-fashioned trick-or-treating. For many years, I've petitioned for Party City to add a tank section. Giant, soulless hunks of steel and death, after all, are people too. Until society catches up with my forward-thinking ways, however, we'll just have to make do with WoT's costume contest, which sees players send in images of themselves playing the game while in costume. Winner gets a premium account for an entire year.