April Fools' Day 09: Running afowl in LotRO

by Shawn Schuster Apr 1st 2009 at 12:00PM

Filed under: Fantasy, Lord of the Rings Online, Culture, Events, in-game, Quests, Humor

What could possibly top the Battle of Amon Hen "content upgrade" from last year's April Fools' Day in Lord of the Rings Online? How about another chicken-themed prank for this year? That's right, for today's festivities, players get the chance to participate in more Chicken Play activities with a small quest line entitled "The Fox in the Hen House".

The quest will start with a piece of mail you'll receive from a concerned farmer. You will then speak to a Town Crier to assume the role of a chicken and run yourself from Gramsfoot to Glan Vraig in the Ettenmoors. Once you've completed this task, you'll earn the esteemed title of "Fool". That's not all though. The day is sure to be filled with various other tricks, so be aware!

[UPDATE: Seems they've closed the quest, according to lotro.com: Due to the load on our servers caused by the April Fool's chicken session play, we are disabling the quest. Please note if you receive a mail, you cannot turn it in with the quest disabled. We hope you had fun while it was open, and we're sorry the quest bawked!]

Tags: april-fools-09, chicken-play, ettenmoors, humor, lord-of-the-rings-online, lotro, pranks, pvmp, turbine

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

y2fatboy said on 12:15PM 4-01-2009

Just like to point out that this quest line is for US players only... Us poor EU players will have to wait until Codemasters decide to do their own version of April Fool's day...

Deryk said on 1:24PM 4-01-2009

Sadly, from Turbine:

April Fool's Quest Disabled
Apr 01, 2009 11:50 EST Due to the load on our servers caused by the April Fool's chicken session play, we are disabling the quest. Please note if you receive a mail, you cannot turn it in with the quest disabled. We hope you had fun while it was open, and we're sorry the quest bawked!

It was kind of fun at first...but what with all the Wargs ganking...it got kind of old too. I think the REAL prank should have been on the creeps. Chickens that can fight back as a Level 60 Elite Master! HAH!

Shawn Schuster said on 1:29PM 4-01-2009

Ugh! That's too bad, but I guess we could see that one coming. This whole thing makes that "Fool" title all the more precioussss...

RogueJedi86 said on 2:33PM 4-01-2009

It wasn't fun to do on Brandywine while it was still up. Ended up being camped by agroup of 5 or 6 Monsters Players. I think I died and had to rejoin some 10+ times before a raid of Free Peoples cleared our spawning point and led us to Glan Vraig. But I ended up finishing it. It was a rush trying to run before the MPs killed us before the Freep raid escorted us.

John said on 3:11PM 4-01-2009

It wasn't very fun. No matter how I did it I was always killed. Fun to try but I don't think I missed much.

MeowCat said on 3:39PM 4-01-2009

It may not have been fun but I did it and was unable to turn it in. Bad form Turbine.

Jay said on 4:14PM 4-01-2009

Such great fun, and a difficult title to get too.

Ending up in the 'moors was a scary thing as a level 1 chook, especially as I don't know my way around that zone.

A few deaths and I decided to create a creep and scout out the zone, unfortunately, while stalking through the trees a column of freeps arrived with 20 chooks in tow, and proceeded to nuke me.

When I came back in as a chicken the rezpoint was camped with wargs and spiders killing chickens as soon as they rezzed, a real blood bath until the freeps got back and got organised, keeping the area clean.

I did a few runs in escort, always being picked off by a daring warg running through the escort and taking out as many chickens as he could, then I decided to go it alone.

Sneaking into the centre of the map I swam up the river as far as I could go then made a mad dash for the corner of the map, not seeing a single mob or creep.

Woot, what a hoot. And I think I only died 40 times.

Snorii said on 4:46PM 4-01-2009

I managed to complete it this morning, but I hate to see the quest get turned off like that. Of the same token, I'd love to see them bring back the chickenball game so I could experience that.

Rick said on 11:48PM 4-01-2009

I managed to get my Fool title last night. It took about 5 attempts, and I had good success not going directly southeast as soon as I left the chicken spawn area. I went north first, cut east high up in the zone, and came down the east zone wall to the quest terminus. I didn't see a single creep out that way, although I did manage to get killed by mobs twice :)

They're all expecting the chickens to make a diagonal line across the zone.