Euro­peans! Get ready to look (and more impor­tantly feel) ridicu­lous, as Code­mas­ters are hold­ing a fash­ion con­test that is being held com­pletely out­side of the game uni­verse. The details are below, hav­ing been posted in the offi­cial EU forums.

[http://​com​mu​nity​.code​mas​ters​.com/​f​o​r​u​m​/​s​h​o​w​t​h​r​e​a​d​.​p​h​p​?​t​=​3​4​7​253]

Greet­ings, fash­ion­istas! Think your fash­ion sense (or lack of it) has what it takes to win the LotRO Spring Fash­ion Week con­test? Send us screen­shots of your best or worst out­fit in LotRO and you could win a cus­tom forums title and avatar for the LotRO com­mu­nity forums! Entries will be accepted in the fol­low­ing categories:

–Best-dressed Indi­vid­ual
–Worst-dressed Indi­vid­ual
–Best-dressed Cou­ple
–Worst-dressed Cou­ple
–Odd Cou­ple
–Best-dressed Kinship

Send in your entries to lotrocompetition@codemasters.com using “Spring Fash­ion Con­test” as the sub­ject line.

Screen­shots must be orig­i­nal and unedited (crop­ping is allowed) and should have a res­o­lu­tion of at least 1024×768. Here are some tips for tak­ing screen­shots:
–You can zoom in to a first-person view with the mouse-wheel
–The num­ber pad or right mouse but­ton can be used to adjust the cam­era angle
–F11 or CTRL-P takes your screen­shot
–Screen­shots are stored in My Documents/The Lord of the Rings Online

Entries must be received by mid­night GMT on April 28^th , 2009. Code­mas­ters Online expects to announce the win­ners dur­ing the week of May 5^th. Eli­gi­ble win­ners will receive a spe­cial forum title (“Fash­ion Hero” or “Fash­ion Vic­tim”) and a cus­tom avatar cre­ated from their win­ning entries!

Click here for the full, offi­cial rules and tips on send­ing in your entry!

I think this is an excel­lent idea, one that really takes play­ers’ inter­ests beyond the game itself and into the expanded ele­ments such as forums and com­mu­nity events. Now I am aware they have done things like this before, but new events are always worth report­ing on to analyse the state of the game. Tur­bine have always been fans of “fluff” con­tent (things that serve no spe­cific pur­pose to beef up your char­ac­ter or PROGRESS through the game) whether its their cos­tume and music sys­tems or their in game events.

The recent Spring Fes­ti­val is an excel­lent exam­ple of how they can cre­ate some­thing fun and immers­ing with­out exclud­ing any­one, and this fash­ion con­test is linked in with that. Even though itof­fers no in-game incen­tive to par­tic­i­pate, it is great to see Code­mas­ters doing some­thing to get play­ers involved with the com­mu­nity. Since here in the EU we lack America’s Mylotro site and other things that allow you to inter­act with the game when not play­ing, it is actions like these that show that the COG is indeed turn­ing and offer­ing what it can.

So do tell. Are you going to enter? Are you not from Europe and dis­ap­pointed that Tur­bine don’t seem to be doing such a con­test? Do you just not care? We’d love to know!

Me, you ask? I am going to enter. After I write this post it’s time to find the most ridicu­lous out­fit I can, break out the turquoise dye and do my hair, ‘cos I want that cus­tom forum good­ness and will stop at noth­ing (Cross dress­ing aside.…well maybe) to win! Rawr!