Template talk:Special events lookup

→ moved from User talk:Chieftain Alex/Templates/Special events

I still don't know which event dates are fixed, and which change slightly from year to year - I think that there will be a pattern, and that one template could do the job if we could work out the pattern. Matthew Moore's comment on Halloween makes it pretty clear that at least some will be fixed exactly.

• <Event name>: <last known start date and time> - <last known end date and time>
  • <description of when event starts and ends>

• Canthan New Year: Thursday 31 01 2013 - Thursday 07 02 2013
  • Last Thursday in January. Lasts a week

• Dragon Festival: Thursday 27 06 2013 - Thursday 04 07 2013
  • Last Thursday in June. Lasts a week.

• Wintersday in July: Wednesday 24 07 2013 - Wednesday 31 07 2013
  • Last 7 days of July. Lasts a week.

• Wayfarer's Reverie: Sunday 25 08 2013 - Sunday 01 09 2013
  • A week before the last sunday after 28th of August. Lasts a week.

• Halloween: Friday 18 10 2013 - Saturday 02 11 2013
  • Fixed dates between 18 Oct + 02 Nov.

• Wintersday: Thursday 13 12 2012 - Wednesday 02 01 2013
  • Begins on first thursday after 13th Dec + ends on 2nd January. ~2-3 weeks

Anyone with any information to build on the information I've collected above? -Chieftain Alex 18:58, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

The quote at the top of Canthan New Year 2013 may imply Wintersday will have a fixed date similar to Halloween. For the other events, there's no way to know for certain if events like Canthan New Year are scheduled to start every year on 31 January or the last Thursday in January without asking Matthew Moore or waiting until the event has occurred twice (i.e. two years) from when events were "put on a fixed schedule" (i.e. during Canthan New Year 2013). --Silver Edge 22:11, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Ahoy there, Chieftain and Silver. I come bearing vaguely official information. Of course, what I'm about to give you is our intention as it stands right now, so it is accurate barring any technical hiccups or changes, which could happen at any time. As of today, however, the following things are what we expect to be true. :D

Moving forward from the start of automation, all holidays are on a fixed schedule. Most events have been increased to seven full days so that they overlap two weekend days at some point, and for this reason, none will be manually adjusted for optimal placement in a given year. As some people discovered at Halloween, this also means fixing a time that, due to daylight savings, will sometimes be an hour earlier or later than one might expect.

Here's the intended schedule:

Holiday	Start	Finale	Stop	Hat/Mini Stop
Canthan New Year	Jan 31, 20:00 UTC	Feb 6, 08:01 UTC	Feb 7, 20:00 UTC	Feb 14, 20:00 UTC
Lucky Treats Week	Mar 14, 19:00 UTC	n/a	Mar 21, 19:00 UTC	n/a
April Fools' Day	Apr 1, 07:01 UTC	n/a	Apr 2, 07:01 UTC	n/a
Sweet Treats Week	Apr 10, 19:00 UTC	n/a	Apr 17, 19:00 UTC	n/a
Anniversary Celebration	Apr 22, 19:00 UTC	n/a	Apr 29, 19:00 UTC	n/a
Dragon Festival	Jun 27, 19:00 UTC	Jul 1, 09:00 UTC	Jul 4, 19:00 UTC	Jul 11, 19:00 UTC
Wintersday in July	Jul 24, 19:00 UTC	n/a	Jul 31, 19:00 UTC	n/a
Wayfarer's Reverie	Aug 25, 19:00 UTC	n/a	Sep 1, 19:00 UTC	Sep 8, 19:00 UTC
Pirate Week	Sep 13, 19:00 UTC	n/a	Sep 20, 19:00 UTC	n/a
Breast Cancer Awareness Month	Oct 1, 07:01 UTC	n/a	Nov 1, 08:01 UTC	n/a
Halloween	Oct 18, 19:00 UTC	Oct 31, 07:01 UTC	Nov 2, 08:01 UTC	Nov 8, 20:00 UTC
Special Treats Week	Nov 21, 20:00 UTC	n/a	Nov 28, 20:00 UTC	n/a
Wintersday	Dec 19, 20:00 UTC	Jan 1, 08:01 UTC	Jan 2, 20:00 UTC	Jan 9, 20:00 UTC

Yes, there are some oddities, like Halloween being 14.5 days instead of 14. And not every holiday will have all its events active from the start, like the Dragon Festival. And some things that used the MAT system but were manually entered every year, like snowball ATs, will never start again. :(

But for the most part, that should reflect what happens every year. I hope it's useful as you assemble some wiki automation that will keep people informed for years to come. Thanks again for all your hard work, and happy holidays! ~ Matthew Moore (talk) 20:54, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Oh wow, thank you very much indeed, I will make use of this by updating this accordingly later :D -Chieftain Alex 21:28, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Instead of "2013", shouldn't the template use {{CURRENTYEAR}}? --Silver Edge 15:25, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

As usual, you are totally correct. I even typed "step #1" in the edit summary when I added those dates to the userspace version that I deleted >.< (meant to have a step 2) -Chieftain Alex 16:28, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

I can't believe the Snowball AT system wasn't a system at all, that it had to be manually 'activated' every year. Is so much effort to just 'add' it to Wintersday, like some quests got added to all festivals and then become available every year at the same date/time? A lot of players think it's sad enough already that the whole game gets automated, but I must say I'd rather have that than never being able to participate in Snowball 'automated' (oh, the irony) tournaments. SuperRobertWa (talk) 19:48, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

Early anniversary items

I cba hacking up the template to make all of these pages work... where do you reckon we should denote this, Mediawiki:Sitenotice? :p -Chieftain Alex 21:05, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

Maybe this is enough? --Silver Edge 06:31, 5 April 2014 (UTC)