Winter of Festivals!
Many worlds weren't content to let us mope about through the winter, but played host to some incredible festivals and holidays. Each world news covers in depth what went down in their neck of the woods but, just as a thank you for providing us with a truly entertaining January, February and March, here's a quick post-party peek.
Hellas' Olympieia Festival
Hellas has been busy, March 9-12, with its own very special mini-festival, the Olympieia Festival of Zeus, which has drawn much attention at AW. With their usual stunning graphics and sense of fun, you could throw a discus, run the marathon from point to point (meeting several sexy monsters from ancient mythology along the way), check special entries in the Museion on Delos, enter perhaps one of the most creative games around ("Zeus' Challenge") and generally both have fun and learn about ancient Hellas. Your reporter hopes this will become an annual event! Special thanks to the scribes of Hellas, all of whom knocked themselves out to give everyone a wonderful time.
Valentines Day, February 2006
Love is in the Air, and in Mesopotamia! For once not just schemed by the lovely ladies of Meso, the men were in on it too. Mesopotamia played host to several great and fun events. Not only widely popular, they got everyone in the spirit whether you are into love holidays or not. Their amazing Gift Card center generated some fantastic member created graphics which everyone happily papered each other's message boards with and made the place just fun to walk around. The Achey Breaky Heart contest was a huge success too, and congratulations to the winners! Want to know? You'll have to read Mesopotamia's World News to find out. (There is alot more in there too, great world news yet again Bahiyyah!)
The Lunar Festival, February, 2006
The ACTA publication schedule JUST missed the wonderful Lunar Festival in the Orient, which ran from January 29-February 5, 2006. Celebrating both the regions of The Orient and the various late-winter celebrations there, we were able to enjoy the events of the Chinese New Year, Setsubun, and Vasant Panchami, one right after the other. In particular, this year's Orient festival builders focused on how to celebrate their neighborhoods within the context of games, quizzes, and special events like Tales from the Misty Mountains (in which several entrants prove that we have as much writing talent at AW as graphics and historical talent). In fact, two events - The Red Phoenix Tour and the mystery game Sung Tzu's Apprentice - were so excellent that they immediately were unanimously voted onto AW's Gems List for The Orient - deservedly!
Our kudos to those who worked so hard to make bleak, cold February warm and fun - for a few days!
Rome Plans Wine Tour
Just one of the many projects being developed for Springfest - with the Bacchic theme! - is a tour of Rome's wonderful wine country; but there are also wine tours in several of the worlds. If you want to volunteer, contact Diantha Livius - and if you want just to drink, save your strength!
Wine is actually a subject for which AW has a lot of authority. Whether Greek or Roman, north-African or Mesopotamian, wine was a mainstay of an ancient world where drinking the water could literally kill you. Stay tuned for more!
Festival Futures?
A small policy change is in the works regarding site festivals, to encourage local worlds to ‘do their own thing’ while, at the same time, preserving our annual site-wide celebration at the anniversary of the official “founding” of AncientWorlds in October, 2002 - our anniversary and autumn festival, known as “Goldfest.”
When we started out, still building the resources of the then-cities of AncientWorlds, two site-wide festivals a year seemed like a good thing. However, particularly in the past year, we find that the scribes and volunteers of the various worlds have taken the “bit in their teeth” and run with the festival concept. Just since the turn of the year, we’ve celebrated Imbolc in Celtia, The Lunar Festival in the Orient, and our recent Olympieia in Hellas. All this, with our Springfest planned for late April!
There comes a time when there are so many festivals that our hard-working scribes and volunteers are stretched too thin. Thus, Admin feels the time has come to cut back on site-wide festivals so that individual worlds can focus, especially in winter and spring, on their own world festivals. Site-wide festivals have special appeal, because we can all join together over several days of festivities just to celebrate the world resources our volunteers have developed - and to be glad that there is an AncientWorlds. But local festivals also have their charms and should be encouraged, focusing on the history and cultures of their worlds over a smaller, more intimate gathering.
Thus, this Springfest will be the last official ‘site-wide’ spring festival, and we hope to have all eight worlds participating in next autumn’s Goldfest. For our members, there will be just as much partying - but for the scribes and volunteers who knock themselves out, hopefully, more time to plan their own festivities in future. Party on!
