by Estim20, HSM Editor

It’s the first week of December, and with Thanksgiving behind us, Home is preparing for the next big holiday: CHRISTMAS!

And you know what that means.

Brace yourselves. Holiday content is approaching – and Lockwood is already gearing up for some fashionable festive gear in time for snowy weather.

Lockwood is known for its premium clothing line that fulfills everything from basic thematic needs to fashion show staples to even the more outlandish, and they aren’t letting something like Christmas stop them from continuing the trend. In addition, they enjoy peppering their various clothing franchises with extra goodness, such as gift machine items and LMOs that enhance the mood. As such, Lockwood is helping lead the festive charge with its litany of new content for holiday well-wishers. After all, how better to celebrate the holidays than with a little LKWD?

With that in mind: first, the holiday items!

LMO Wonderland Ice Skates

Christmas is laden with certain classics, from sleigh rides to instrumental music with copious amounts of ‘warmth’ to this staple from bygone eras: skating. In addition to keeping the body warm thanks to constant movement, it has a certain grace to it – ballet on ice, if you will. If something can make even Goofy seem majestic on ice, it is no surprise it is a popular holiday pastime.

The video projects a soothing calm that you find somewhere between Charlie Brown and Lake Wobegon, and it is fitting for such an activity (and for such a setting). It shows that among many things Lockwood is great at fulfilling, it is outstanding at sending the right image – and the skates (and video itself) capture the feelings many of us will have this holiday season. It’s the time of the year to take in the beauty of snow, the cooling landscape, and togetherness and skating provides a foray into all three. Skating parties, anyone?

The skates are going to be available in the Gift Machine as well as Lockwood’s store, in various colors as is standard for such items. They are indeed LMOs, so feel free to skate across Home this upcoming update!

LMO Stormur the Reindeer

Stormur the Reindeer returns in time for the holidays, this time with a welcome update. Buy the locomotion and you can ride him like Santa on a budget!

If 2012 was the year of the game, 2013 is (if nothing else) the year of the LMO – and the likes of Stormur are proof in the (Christmas) pudding for why that they are popular. Companions alone proved how versatile the inventory is and LMOs take it the next step by changing how our avatars behave. We can now take our avatars to fashion shows, dance-offs, and the holidays with any variety of immersive locomotions. We can even make our avatars look like or ride animals, as is the case with Stormur’s LMO debut.

Jolly Cheer Dance Pack (and Another Pack for Good Measure)

I’m including this here out of how appropriate festive it all feels. I mean, can you just imagine this dance pack in the hands of Mary Poppins or elves? It would be a mesmerizing sight in its own right.

There are plenty of items whose popularity comes as a surprise to nearly no one. If there is one line of items whose popularity is the least shocking to see, however, the dance packs are likely that. For the longest time avatars could use only the R1 commands to express their mood and dance capabilities, a restriction bemoaned by many users over the course of Home’s existence. Nothing quite ruined immersion like being limited to a bogglingly small selection of options.

When LMOs became a thing, dance packs filled the void as quickly as the chance allowed. Much like how mood packs pulled away limitations on self-expressions, dances opened a new frontier for avatar socialization. We, as human beings, seek social bonds as a means of enriching ourselves and others, as well as form relationships to better our minds and sanity. Dances are undeniably a huge piece of bonding and once LMOs opened the flood gates, no one could stop the avalanche of dance packs from falling onto Home.

And for good reason: we can now feel that expression is less limited, not restricted to simplifying how we  feel visually because we have no alternative. That’s not all, of course. The jolly cheer dance pack also has the benefit of feeling so nostalgically accurate, it’s like Mary Poppins herself taught us a valuable lesson on the power of happiness. Right before Huey Lewis sang about the power of love and we rocked out like mad hatters.

Speaking of rocking out:

If foal needed an introduction, this would be it. It sums up what you can expect from the line, this sense of comfort, style, and rock-your-face-out sensibilities. That last part may be more for this dance pack, but it still stands. A dance pack like this will undeniably work towards boosting people’s inventories.

Fool Throttle Venetian Ball Clothing and Drey VIP Room

Did anyone else get a ‘Venice via Nightmare Before Christmas’ vibe from the music?

On the other side of the update, away from the holiday trappings of December, is Lockwood’s continued dedication to providing content worthy for fashion balls. Whereas the dance packs above lean more towards rock and general happiness, the Venetian line goes for the high class angle. Gowns and frocks dominate the collection, in both Gift Machine and store flavors.

If Lockwood is courting the fashion crowd, it has good reason to do so. Fashion shows, like personal space decoration, are one of the most popular features on Home and a major social event. People are encouraged to show off their sense of style and it’s a good means (especially with the ‘inspect’ feature) to advertise fashion lines to the user base.

It becomes clearer with the addition of a personal space that is all about clothing. The Drey VIP Room is a showcase of Drey’s expansive and impressive line of clothing, with two free outfits to get you started. Drey’s back catalog provides the backbone for the space, much like Digital Leisure’s placeable wardrobe shows how many of their items you ow

It really shows how much clothing has become a whale industry (so to speak) for developers. Numerous users are fashionistas, revolving around the very idea of showing how clothing hangs on an avatar and what a creative mind can produce with what Home offers. Much like decorating, it is a creative outlet with as many ways to express said creativity as there are users. It’s one of Home’s numerous raison d’etre, a meta-game of sorts that encourages people show individuality and creative license.

Drey itself can perhaps be seen as a manifestation of this, with the VIP Room being its showcase. Bringing everything together under a convenient feature should help make life easier as well as give a fashionista an opportunity to hold a fashion show in an oddly logical locale.

Expect the VIP room to hit the Gift Machine this update!

Winter Wrap-Up

For SCEE users, Lockwood will also release the Ultimate Variety Bundle, containing 24 pieces of clothing, five pieces of furniture, thirteen LMOs, two apartments and 6 LKWD venue customization packs. Much like everything else on this list, bundles are increasing in popularity as people become budget-minded and wouldn’t mind buying everything in one go. Bundles may also help give light to little-used items in a company’s catalog, at a price that is enticing to anyone that doesn’t want to break the bank.

Also for SCEE users, Lockwood will release the Serenity Lake personal space (and associated content). SCEA already has this space, but with the pending update SCEE users won’t have to jump the pond to buy it or find an SCEA user to visit it.

This update is shaping up to be one magnificent goodie-bag for Lockwood fans and Home fans as a whole. December’s first update is thus a sign of good things to come and a holiday season we won’t regret.

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