Project Lore

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?

Click to read more ...