Game developers, publishers and services worldwide never fail to come up with inventive pranks for April Fool’s Day, and this year is no different.
If you thought last year’s ideas were crazy and inventive, then you’ve seen nothing yet as the likes of Blizzard, ID Software, FilePlanet and 2K Games have strived to outdo themselves this year. I’ve sought out the most noteworthy ones and combined them all into this crazy list for your perusal.
Enjoy!
As they do every year, Blizzard has numerous crazy new ideas and schemes for each of their games and services floating around the web on April 1st. The most impressive of these may well be their newly announced – and launched – Battle.net MatchMaking service, with the tagline: “Find someone to pwn noobs with”. A promotional video and a fully functional website are included over here.
Meanwhile, World of WarCraft will see the introduction of the Equipment Potency EquivalencE Number, or EPEEN. A nifty new tool for the truly dedicated WoW player who needs a new ranking system to dominate by gathering the best collection of gear in the game. This news was followed by the announcement of a Battle.net Neural Interface, which is a device that will permanently attach itself to your brain in order to provide gamers with a whole new level of sensory input, including smells and tastes!
Diablo fans (and pro gamers) should really benefit from Blizzard’s next announcement, in the Diablo 3 Deckard Cain X-Treme Gamer Blanket. If you always get cold hands while playing, lowering your precision, then this is the ideal item for you. Where gloves simply do not work and regular blankets constrict your movement, lowering your APM, this specially produced blanket features Freedom of Movement Holes and heating runes for optimal comfort while playing. And if you buy two, then you get a – potentially cursed – Diablo 3 body pillow for free! Buy one now.
Another interesting product in the same line as the X-Treme Gamer Blanket is the Deckard Cain GPS Voice Pack. Navigate traffic with the aid of your favorite antediluvian archivist of the Diablo series.
SplashDamage has unveiled Tapir Wars 3: It Just Got Chilly. This promising third person shooter includes the revolutionary TRAMS system that automatically calculates the correct course of action for the players, so there is no need to memorize awkward control schemes. A trailer including in-game footage is available on the official website, linked above.
Another surprise announcement comes from the direction of BioWare Entertainment and LucasArts, who have revealed a ninth playable class in Star Wars: The Old Republic. The Sarlacc Enforcer promises the use of partially digested opponents as weaponry, as well as laserbeams capable of slicing through planets shot from your belly. And all this in the guise of a simple thousand year old sand monster.
2K Games may just have rolled out the most shocking revelation however, as Civilization V will feature a beat ‘em up style DeathMatches called Extreme Diplomacy. Should regular diplomacy and military might fail to provide the desired results, you can always challenge the opponent’s political leader to a fight to the death, with requisite special attacks and finishing moves! Naturally, different faction leaders will feature different fighting styles and there will even be a special edition of the game that will include an eight-button joystick for optimal control.
Stunning pre-order sales figures have arrived from Paradox Interactive, as their upcoming Western-themed multiplayer shooter Lead & Gold has sold a whopping 2.4 billion pre-order copies on the PC platform alone! Who ever said PC gaming was dead? Console figures aren’t quite in yet, but are expected to triple this amount.
In other multiplayer shooter news, ID Software has revealed yet another new server type for Quake Live. These new unranked Free For All servers feature an exciting new 3-frag limit in order to speed up games and improve the competitive viability of less skilled players, or noobs. Check it out now!
Dragon Age: Origins sees the release of a new feastday gifts and pranks pack DLC. In celebration of the Satinalia holiday in Ferelden, you can now give your party members feastday gifts they will enjoy, or feastday prank items that will ruin your status with them.
BioWare, in another stunning revalation, has unveiled a secret romance plot in Mass Effect 2 that has me scrambling to play through the game again. Female Shepard players can apparently romance an elcor, which culminates into this scene.
Further Pranks and Announcements
- FilePlanet exclusively released the Duke Nukem Forever demo! Supposedly 967 MB large it mysteriously comes in at a mere 20 MB of audio files. Wrong file? Who knows.
- PC Gamer Blog unveils an industry secret: gamers’ have been fooled! Games for Windows Live was perfectly functional and a welcome new gaming service on the PC platform all along!
- PC Pro reports new Lottery-Core CPUs by AMD. No more dual-core and quad-core nonsense, with lottery-core technology you won’t know how many functional cores you get until you fire it up.
- Ten Ton Hammer in an ill-fated move has chosen the same day to reveal their new Ten Ton Hammer Personals feature for lonely gamers and empty guilds, as the launch day for Blizzard’s Battle.net MatchMaking service.
- The Xfire website has seen a makeover with a brand-new design including beautiful green neon ASCII art.
- Valve cancels the Mac version of Steam, because Newell still hates Mac.
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