EM Event
EM Event refers to various in-game events run by paid employees of EA called Event Moderators. The EMs were a successor to long-ago volunteer event programs, run by Seers, who were volunteers. The first EM Events were connected to an EA-run plotline involving Minax, and occurred following the release of the Age of Shadows expansion.
After the "Revenge of the Enchantress" plotline petered out, EMs stayed around and ran events of their own. EM Events were broad in scope, and have included: PvP tournaments, fishing contests, fashion shows, etc. Community relations and the EM program have suffered over time. Several tangentially-related, player-initiated lawsuits harmed the EM paradigm in the United States. Eventually, the EM program was discontinued, after many months of inactivity.
While EM Events were generally well-attended, the quality of such events was often said by players to have varied widely. Message boards also featured complaints that EM events were held at odd hours or unexpectedly.
The EM program was reinstated, and is currently active. Items are no longer given out as regularly, and are primarily decorative items, or items with basic properties with unusual names. Such items often command high prices. At one event, broken crystals hued different colors for each shard were selling for as much as 5 million within seconds. There is currently a great deal of debate over these items, as many wish them to be distributed more fairly, others simply want more to be distributed, period.
There are usually one or two EMs permanently assigned to each shard, while others may float between shards as needed. They usually wear uniquely hued, named items such as lanterns, spellbooks, staves, or hats. They wear green robes identical to the ones worn by other EA employees.
Notes
- There is a legacy of unfinished EM events on many shards. Examples include: burning docks at Jhelom and monster spawns in unusual places.
EM Items
Winners, or even mere participants, of EM Events were often awarded special items. These items ranged from decorative, to personal adornment, to extremely useful (in some cases so useful that accusations of imbalance were levied). Below is a sample list of such items: