blizzard The Blizzard April Fools Archive and Highlights

[Starym 3,800]

 

After the recent re-emergence of the one day a year that's officially allowed to be funny and the official Blizzard patch notes that came with it, we wanted to go back and check out older editions of this now tradition. It turns out Blizzard actually has an archive for their April Fools posts, which is good news, but they also stopped updating it in 2015, which is bad news.

In any case we poked around it for some fond memories and picked out some milestones, but you should definitely head on over and check it out yourselves as well. Unfortunately some of the entries there have broken links so we don't get to see all the content, but we do at least get a general idea of what it was and can search it elsewhere if it gets interesting.

It seems the one Prince song may have been referring to Blizzard, as they started their April Fools shenanigans in 1999, with the original StarCraft and DIablo 2! And what a start it was, as it was the one that cemented the secret cow level as the most enduring joke of the Diablo franchise. You can read more about the exact origins of the cow level, but this April 1st screenshot of D2, while it was still being developed, reignited the fires of the cow level craze!

Now we did end up actually getting a cow level in Diablo 2, so I'm not quite sure this one counts as a "fool" anymore, since it's basically just normal promotion art (ok, so the cows don't show up in the Den of Evil, but they might have back then!). The other entry in this very first April Fools Blizzard edition was StarCraft's Biggest Game Hunters map, based on the very popular Big Game Hunters one from the original game, except with... a few... more crystals:

2002 was another of Blizzard's strangely predictive jokes, as they announced the Pandaren were coming to WarCraft 3, including their Shodo-pan warriors.

Then WoW arrived on the scene and we immediately got one of the better ones, with the 2-player controlled Ogre race (which would later become a pretty great hero in Heroes of the Storm... wait, are Blizzard just using April Fools jokes to test the waters for their really weird ideas that they'll eventually implement?!)

This next one is definitely one of my favorites, as Blizzard announced a brand new game set in the World of Warcraft universe, and it was a prequel to boot!

Wait, was that one actually just another pre-concept-testing for Reforged?! I'm so confused right now.

Then came one of the most famous ones of all time, 2008's Bard announcement!

  

The same year had the impressive console off-shoot of WoW, the Molten Core:

These following ones are really making me doubt these are jokes at all, as they're clearly just the shape of things to come, as 2010 saw the first whiff of Diablo: Immortal and the EPEEN system:

Quote

Blizzard Mobile Games
Blackthorne 2: Thorne Harder: The bestselling action adventure shooter returns... and this time, it's personal.

Queen's Quest: Using a revolutionary technology known as a TEXT PARSER, you will guide the Queen of Blades on a quest to save the Swarm from ultimate destruction.

  

There are plenty more awesome entries in the archive, so head on over there and remind yourselves of some of the cooler things Blizzard have done over the years, and definitely post some of the better ones we missed below!

[krapmyself 60]

Pandaren

 

LITERALLY A JOKE.

[Alkasar 55]

On 4/5/2020 at 6:40 AM, krapmyself said:

Pandaren

 

LITERALLY A JOKE.

Started as a joke.
And became part of deciding matches in WC3 championships with the brewmaster.