HWM Halloween history

Author: Паук-призрак

Interpreter: Dorck1

Good day, hero!

There is a little time before Halloween! The whole Empire changes in anticipation of this holiday: military clans stylize their icons; munchkins take a lot of coffee and surround themselves with instructions to win in the race of Squashmen; moderators of QaH are preparing for an influx of the questions in their branch of the forum. And of course all players want to know what admins have prepared this time!

In this article we suggest you to look through the history of celebrating Halloween in HWM in every year.

So let’s refer to the history:

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31 October 2007 (9 years ago)

Halloween was not celebrated. But the invasion of demons into the Empire’s lands was happened. We could suppose that the date of their attack wasn’t chosen randomly. Anyway the holiday was indirectly touched.

The example of the combat

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31 October 2008 (8 years ago)

There was no news but exactly on this day the creatures from nightmares have started their first attacks. The combat took place on the common battlefield and there was one enemy Pumkinheads.

The example of the combat

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31 October 2007 (7 years ago)

News about Nightmares appeared in the “official announcements". It contains a short artistic story about a barbarian Gharet who became a participant of a typical but stylized for HWM scary plot and met with Surtaz who was known among players with his actions on the Empire’s lands. The attacks appeared again but in this time they were on the special battlegrounds – nightmare arena.

Moreover, the amount of creatures increased. With Pumpkinhead came:

• Grim reapers – is very fast creatures without retaliation. It’s a reference to the film «Scream».

• Frankenstein – monsters are slow but have many hp points. Their prototype has exactly the same name.

• Yagas – fly and cast fireballs. I think that it’s not necessary to say where they’ve come from. :)

• Skeletal hydras – ate the same hydras but have different appearance. Attack and hp points are lower, but they more defense and initiative.

The combats had the special format. In the first combat players got seven the weakest creatures of every faction (skeletons, gremlins, farmers, goblins, imps, bandits, faeries) instead of their armies. Of course nightmare’s army killed them quickly and only then auxiliary army came to help the hero and his army threefold increased. It helped only one time and then players should have fought against the enemies with their common armies.

The example of the combat #1

The example of the combat #2

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31 October 2010 (6 years ago)

One more artistic news appeared. Now the knight had a horrible dream in which he lost the battle against the necromancer (probably, it’s a reference to Surtaz). The nightmares also appeared. The number of monsters increased:

• Sneaky horror – is a fast mob which can drain life as vampires and have a fear attack. The prototype for it is Freddy Krueger.

• Soul collector – is a terrible creature which has 90% ignorance of defense. Indeed, it’s the Death itself.

• Jack-o’-lantern – is a fast mob which is like shrews returns to its initial position after attack and like as infected zombies reduces the attacked troop. From this year Pumpkinheads was replaced by Jack-o’-lantern.

The changes were also in combats. Now in the first combat against nightmares players had one stack with one unit of the weakest creature in players’ army, but this unit had higher characteristics. And again when the nightmares practically killed it auxiliary army came.

One more innovation is a safe area where the nightmares couldn’t attack you. It was Sunny City.

The example of the combat

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31 October 2011 (5 years ago)

The number of combats was limited to 9. But it was compensated by the fact that they began to invade not only in dreams but in common combats. The Hallowed pumpkins, appeared in PVP- combats which working like spheres in survival tournaments and New Year presents. By the way, these pumpkins had bugs hinting at the fact that the idea of them was taken from New Year presents – in the combat’s chat the effect from pumpkins was shown as the effect from New Year presents:

Skeletons have found the New Year's Gift: Skeletons increase the attack on 10.

Pumpkins’ effects were different:

• +10 troop

• +10 troop

• The resurrection of the dead creatures in the stack

• Annihilation of one unit in the stack

• The teleportation of the stack to the random cell on the battleground

• Summon the creature from nightmares

The safe area was Sunny City.

The example of the combat

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30 October 2012 (4 years ago)

At this time there were no nightmares but a Squashman, which was known among players, changed them. The Squashman – is a special creature which could attack other characters. Actually it could attack not them but their copies. It was an automatic combat after which the Squashman got experience. Your pet-pumpkin could be develop – you could develop its characteristics, level and give new powerful abilities such as “shooter”, “strike and return”, “double strike”, “imperceptibility”, “life drain” and so on. You also could give an ability “caster” to the Squashman and take a row of spells.

The Squashman also changed graphically - then higher lvl he had then bigger he became. It got wings with the ability “flyer”. As a result, Squashmen turned into real monsters and looked like a bogatyr.

The example of the combat #1

The example of the combat #2

12,000 the strongest owners of Squashmen got achievements for personal information.

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30 October 2013 (3 years ago)

The Squashmen came again.

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31 October 2014 (2 years ago)

And again the Squashmen came.

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31 October 2015 (a year ago)

The Squashmen came one more time. But for diversity Admins returned the nightmares!

All was the same as in 2011, but there was a promise in the official announcement that the nightmares could invade in the combat but it wasn’t noticed. The Hallowed pumpkins weren’t also noticed in PVP-combats. Moreover, the first combat was a little bit changed. There wasn’t a unit of the weakest stack in players’ army but was a unit which personified the hero (e.g. wizards or battlewise wizards had the magi). In addition, this unit had not only spells of the creature which it symbolized but also spells of the character (e.g. magi could cast “fireball” or “ice ring” and so on) and character’s characteristics.

The example of the combat

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31 October 2016 (is coming soon!)

What will happen at this time? Will the Squashman? come again? Will the nightmares visit our dreams? Perhaps, will we see the hallowed pumpkins? Or will it be something new?

Soon we will know about it. A few days left! ;)