Project Lore

Image from Zazzle.com

Let's take a moment to return to yesterday's prank filled landscape and see what the greater interweb has to offer us.  Naturally we will start off with Blizzard and their hijinks. P1mp My Mount:  Thanks to the wonderful creation of timezones, the European team was able to get the ball rolling hours before Blizzard's HQ in California had even brushed their teeth.  The creative photoshopping of the "Battlecat" took the prize in this round, followed closely by the Garage and its collection of ridiculous parts.  There was a distinct lack of "Yo Dawg" in this post though. StarCraft II's Terratron: This was the first April Fools prank I saw from the North American team.  Here we have a Terran base re-purposing itself as a defensive structure.  Sorry, THE defensive structure - and offensive.  Whoever wrote the description did it with a sort of passion reserved for BurgerCraft posts.  The included videos pass when compared to other unit layouts, but the presentation as a whole is not as glamorous as other pranks. Dance Battle System: Blizzard proper did the wait justice with their newest form of PvP combat, breakdancing.  Kael'Thas, apparently bored of summoning Kil'jaeden to Azeroth, has decided to throw a dance contest to find the best crew in Azeroth.  The post pokes fun at numerous dancing themed shows and movies (all the headers are based on one) and even the hunky Acy Slater.  Mesh Shirt of Inappropriateness = instant classic. Diablo III's Archivist: This year Diablo III reigned supreme for me.  Not only did the April Fools team developing Diablo make an obscene new class, but they crafted a catching bit of lore and finely tuned spells to go along with the prank.  As if they hadn't wasted enough time on the witty screenshots (discussion tree FTW), the team created a trio of trailers for the hilarious spells.  Shush, it's hilarious. Here I go branching out again.  The best WoW-based April Fools' Day prank I stumbled across was WoWInsider's Hungry Man Reviews.  Chase Christian's (a fellow rogue by the way) review of Dragonbreath Chili is the winner of the bunch.  As for best video game-based gag I have happened upon, that would go to CD Projekt RED and their announcement of The Witcher: Mysterious Secrets.  Best overall goes to ThinkGeek's Tauntaun Sleeping Bag, just because I want it to be real oh so badly. WoWInsider promises a WoW-based recap sometime today, and GameSpot already has their conglomeration of funnies available which include the best video for April Fools, the Ostrich Hammer.  Which did you enjoy the most?

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You may be expecting me to do some crazy April Fools' Day stuff, but I am going to let the other bloggers handle that.  Okay fine, here is the first bit of April Fools' Day content from Blizzard, Pimp My Mount!  Now that we got that out of the way, let us get to the topic at hand.  In yesterday's Balancing Act I passed along the sad news that a trio of well respected bloggers were going to be moving on.  One of these three was Syp, whom I had read since before Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning went live back in September.  He won't be quitting his Engineer toon or WAR during his move to multi-MMO commentary, but I will be. It isn't that I don't like WAR, its community or its direction.  In fact, I very much enjoyed its similarities and differences when it was released, and that continues today.  Yet when my subscription expires in a few days it will be the end of my foray into Games Workshop's fantasy universe.  The main reason I am abandoning my Shaman (healer) is the topic we discussed yesterday, time management.  I simply cannot do everything I need to in life and play two MMORPGs in the style I want to.  If I didn't feel like playing any other video games, then I could fit Mythic's title alongside WoW, but that will never happen. Despite the title's shortcomings (PvE) and hiccups (Realm balance), Mythic Entertainment did a bunch of great things.  Things that even the WoW community would come to love and admire.  Here are the top 5 things that I loved about WAR and Mythic's support of their MMORPG, in order of awesomesauce (less to more).

• Targeting - WAR allowed all players to select offensive & defensive targets by default.  The capability was expertly implemented, allowing players to seamlessly DPS and heal without having to click all over.  The experience was so amazing that I became a bit frustrated during my healing duties in WoW until I got used to Blizzard's mechanics again.  On the flip slide, selecting via click in WAR is terrible, and works great in WoW.
• State of the Game - Mark Jacobs, basically THE man at Mythic Entertainment, would post walls of text every so often.  In these addresses (which seem to come every quarter or so) the GM/VP/CEO would lay out the company's plans for the forseeable future and address the community's largest concerns.  It was refreshing to see a busy and important person interacting directly with the players.
• War Herald - Following the dissemination of information from Jacobs is the far more commonly updated War Herald.  The Herald was created in lieu of hosting official forums (which they now do) as a way to centralize important announcements and information.  Rather than having hundreds of bloggers and journalists scouting forums for important developer posts, the War Herald summed it all up in one place for everyone to digest.
• Clarity - I like well defined things.  That is the main reason I enjoy math, 2+2 always equals seventeen.  The previous two bullet points were constantly full of dates, goals and clear descriptions on what was going on in the title.  Problems with realm balance?  They are aware, here is what they are trying to do and this is when we can expect it.  Sure, they didn't always hit their release goals, and we understand why developers can be vague on dates, but they clarified everything as far as they could.  This player loved them for it.
• Tome of Knowledge - This is the defining characteristic of WAR in my opinion.  Mythic didn't see any point in hiding all of the data a character has connected to them so they just put it all out there.  Wonder if you completed a quest way back when?  Check the ToK.  Did you want to re-read that awesome story from an earlier chapter?  Fire up the ToK.  How many more monsters do I need for the next Unlock (their version of Achievements)?  Dust off the ToK.  WoW doesn't allow us to look at our toon's past in any tangible way, yet all that information is recorded.  Why not give it to us?  It'd certainly make those Loremaster achievements easier if we knew what we had and hadn't accomplished.

Obviously, if I enjoyed WAR more than WoW then I would have stuck with it.  That simply isn't the case.  Blizzard's MMORPG has far more to offer me, especially since I love PvE.  The reason for the list is because iterating and polishing is really what Blizzard does best.  Many of their titles aren't drastically different than those before it, they just perfect every. Single. DETAIL.  If I had to chose any one topic to see Blizzard apply to the way they handle WoW, it would be the Clarity bulletpoint.  Have you experienced anything in other titles - or WoW's past - that would apply to our favorite MMORPG? There goes all the hard work on my Dual-Gaming setup.  Oh, and on an entirely unrelated note, if you see someone fall off their bike, go help them up and make sure they are okay.  Otherwise you may get called out on the Internet for being an a-hole.

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It's almost here. The day where all hell breaks loose on the Internet and two-headed orcs attempt to make a mockery of the great Horde faction. So, in celebration of the hilarity that Blizzard will undoubtedly unleash starting midnight tonight, we at Project Lore wanted to take a look back at some of Blizzard's best attempts to make a fool of us all. Shortly after my first venture into WoW in early 2006, Blizzard revealed its best venture EVER! BurgerCraft.

IRVINE, Calif. -- April 1, 2006 -- Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today unveiled BurgerCraft™, introducing the company’s latest business venture and revealing many details about the plans for its company-owned restaurant chain. The grand opening of the first BurgerCraft restaurant is set to take place on June 1, 2006 in downtown Los Angeles, California.

EPIC! Now it seems that the original WoW forum posts from 2005 that inspired this glorious idea have since been removed. But thankfully, WoWwiki and its infinite wiki wisdom have kept records of what started as a meme from poster Gilgamesh from Alleria. How many of you remember this?

WoB: Welcome to World of Burgercraft. Would you like a PVE value meal, a PVP value meal, or an RP value meal? Car 1: What is the difference between the PVE and PVP meals? WoB: The PVP burger has onions. The PVE burger does not. Except sometimes. You can add onions if you want. And we sneak some onions in toward the end of the PVE burger but you don't have to eat them. You can skip that part of the burger. Car 1: What about the RP burger? WoB: Vegetarian.

I appreciate that this joke stemmed from the players themselves. Blizzard knows how to appease its fan base! The previous year, Blizzard made a crack on its own battlegrounds system, which was then in development, by announcing that the battlegrounds would be pulled straight from Warcraft III, which Blizzard said would "allow us to better focus our efforts on creating game features that players really want, such as ordering various types of food in-game!" Apparently, food is a driving force for all WoW players. But Blizzard also is well aware of the fact that we are constantly scrounging for details on what's yet-to-come in game. They've taunted us with a great many new playable races - the mighty Pandaren, the air-headed Wisps and two-headed Ogres; items - the infamous tinfoil hat and related Troll Tears; a hero class - the Guitar Hero-styled Bard; and even a new console game - my personal favorite, World of Warcraft: The Molten Core. Each year, Blizzard seems to come up with a more elaborate prank involving fake screenshots, back stories and even bogus commercials. I would question whether it was all worth it except for one thing: it really energizes the fan community and gets us all talking. So, while I cringe at the thought of being duped into another April Fools' joke, I'm also really looking forward to seeing what Blizzard throws at us this year. Personally, I'm all for them shouting out to the fans once again and recruiting a certain legendary team to rule over Azeroth with an iron fist for the day. Your new overlords: Bowbins, Lylelovett, Winterstrike, Dorkins and Juggynaut. Perhaps you've heard of them? So, what are all your predictions for the coming mayhem? Are you looking forward to the madness, or do you plan to lie low until it's all over?

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