got an interesting email from NCSoft today:

Quote: The holidays have come to Paragon City™ and the Rogue Isles™! Thanks to the kindness of Miss Liberty™ and the greed of Black Scorpion™, heroes and villains alike are zipping around with their brand new, top of the line jet packs. The first gifts have arrived but that was only the beginning! As the sounds of joyful holiday celebrations in Paragon City reach the shores of the Rogue Isles, Lord Recluse™ grows uneasy. Fearing that his destined ones will be lured away by the promise of a jolly holiday season, he has set Operation Scrooge into action. At his bidding, villains will soon begin to creep towards the peaceful streets of Paragon City, bent on making sure that no one has anything to celebrate. Whiff of this nefarious scheme has reached Miss Liberty and she has organized a counter strike. No one will destroy her plans and so she sets Operation Holiday Cheer in motion. Heroes and villains prepare to enter enemy territory! Beginning December 15th, Operation Scrooge and Operation Holiday Cheer will battle for control of the holidays. As these operations are set into motion, a new figure watches from the shadows. Acting outside any simple definition of “hero” or “villain”, a mysterious figure known only as Gamester has entered the scene. Delighted by the growing holiday tension, he is ready to intervene and announce his presence in a shocking way! No simple trickster, Gamester is irrationally fond of dangerous pranks and knavish shenanigans. Seeking fun in his own twisted mental world of games and puzzles, he has no concern for the outcome, searching only for the next game to play.The bigger the risk, the more thrilling the challenge. Inspired by the holiday scheming of Miss Liberty and Lord Recluse, Gamester has hatched his grandest game yet and now he plots to release it upon both cities. Gamester’s Holiday Festival of Fun is a game of chance that allows everyone to play to see what fate holds in store. With gleeful anticipation, Gamester plans to unleash his Holiday Festival of Fun across Paragon and the Isles on December 19th! Come and see what fortune might be yours before the games end on January 2nd!

it sounds to me like they're going to allow villains into paragon city and heroes into the rogue isles with the "enemy territory" part. heh, maybe i'll be able to pick up some Paragon city GM badges while i'm there if that's the case.

OK, the newest round of Holiday events is live.
Basically, on every map (not sure about Hazzard Zones), there are presents that are spread randomly throughout the Zone. When your toon opens a present, one of 2 things will happen:

1) "You've Been Nice!" message will flash on the screen, and if you have room in your inspiration tray you'll get a present in the tray (delivers a random inspiration effect, to the best of my knowlege...i have not done extensive testing on this)

2) You've Been Naughty!" message will flash on the screen, and a random amount of Winter Lord minions will appear (including bosses and Lts at times). If you defeat a total of 100 of the minions, you will recieve the Cold Warrior Achievement badge (one of the badges from last year's Winter Lord event). I have confirmed the badge...Khalim just got it.

EDIT
Ok, after reading the CoH boards, it appears that there might also be some temp powers associated with the presents as well:
Build snowbeast (one use power)
Throw snowball (12 day)
I haven't gotten either of them, just relaying info as i find it

Here's a thread dedicated to people listing the sorts of gifts that they've gotten:
here

EDIT
Be forewarned: server stability issues haven't been resolved yet, and the servers are going to be shut down in 30 minutes (7:30ish PM EST) for "Emergency Maintanence".

excellent. now the problem is killing 100 of them for every one of my toons . .. kind of wish i was at my apartment so i could at least team two of them together but alas i'm at home with just my laptop.

Apparently, there is another badge out there called the "Toy Collector". From what I understand, you have to get around 100 nice presents to get the badge, much the same way you have to get 100 villains for the Cold Warrior badge.

Rob

i just finished getting Cold Warrior and Toy Collector on Incendia Dicio. here's a list of temp powers and insps I picked up along the way:
Gift of Defense: Greatly increases defense
Gift of Power: Greatly increases damage
Lump of Coal: waste of an insp slot, does nothing
Gift of Energy: Large endurance gain
250 prestige: got 3 of these while I was doing this so +750 for PR Republic
Gift of life: Large health gain
Gift of experience: 1 hour debt protection or until first death

snowballs: Lasts for 12 days. Throw a snowball
snow beast: 1 summon of a Winter Horde Boss. Lasts for 5 minutes before melting down.

I found a really great route in Talos for snagging the presents. It works best for toons with SJ but should work ok with SS toons and a little slower for ones with fly. If any of you want me to show it to you, send me a tell in game on @Enko or @Enko2 (got CoV for my second account so probably making another toon there soon) or you can send me a PM here or on PR. I'll probably find a route in Atlas and Galaxy City as well for all my low level toons as I need to get these 2 badges on something around 17 toons . .. Its going to take me a looong time .. ..
Hopefully I'll find a good route in CoV to do it as well though I hear its hard to do since a lot more people are playing that instead of CoH right now.

I haven't tested it, but i've been seeing posts on the forums that say Toy Collector is for 200ish presents (both types). One person said that he got it after opening a "Naughty" present. If i can verify, i will...however, if i get WoW tonight, i won't be verifying it :crazy: :angrygame :crazy:

i checked the 100 nice present theory tonight with a villain. didn't count the naughty presents since i had no easy way of keeping track of them. i got the toy collector badge after 67 nice presents and an unknown amount of naughty ones. people were saying that 200 presents was confirmed on vidiotmaps. one of the guys i showed my Port Oakes route to, said he got at least 223 and still didn't get the badge. it looks like their counter might be broken with some things.

in other goods news, someone told me that i can have two CoH clients running at one time so now i can still get on two toons whenever i only have my laptop with me. heh with all these copies of CoH and CoV i have, i might just make 8 two week free trial accounts to get prestige with since the fastest way to get prestige is with a full team of sg members.