Massively^™

We nearly missed this one, but thankfully one of our readers didn't, and sent us this screenshot of a chest in EverQuest II. Looks just a little bit different doesn't it? Another nod to the gaming world's beloved Portal, it seems that players were treated to Weighted Companion Chests in EQII for April Fools' Day. Hopefully you looted that quest starter before tossing the chest in the Emergency Intelligence Incinerator, Rollins!

[Thanks, Rollins]

We should've known those merry pranksters at Funcom wouldn't let the day go by without something. Age of Conan is best-known for its Barbarians, of course, but did you know that there were elves to be played as well?

According to the site, 'Their graceful nature and beautiful appearance will often garner a few coin from passers-by simply by existing, and elves are granted first access to all taverns in the land, while others may have to wait for an instance to open up just to get in, and their exclusive, elf-only tree cities provide a relaxing respite from a wearying world.' So basically, elves are the celebrities of Hyboria. What else is new?

For extra points, make sure you check out the elf character creation video at the bottom of the page!

[Thanks, Rollins!]

The pranks continue with the last place you'd expect to see bling: Dungeons and Dragons Online. Fans of tricked-out rides can now get their smoove on in DDO with 'Pimp My Warforged'! That's right, no longer do you have to labor under the drab and dull colors of battle-hardened plate mail and boots so dusty you could write 'wash me' in them; get classy!

But not only will you look good; you also get bonuses to gameplay with your pimpin' character: try out the new Skill: Pneumatics -- it lets you go up and down! Or the new enhancement Slow Your Roll, that keeps your 20-sided from tipping over onto the 1! It's all there for your reading pleasure. Just make sure you have the cash to pay for all this -- ground effects ain't cheap!

Well, what else would you expect from the company that brought you murlocs? April Fool's day is in full effect in Blizzardlandia, and World of Warcraft isn't the only game to get the treatment, but it's a good place to start!

Molten Core: for consoles
Heavily trading on fond gamer memories of Atari's Adventure, Blizzard brings us the console version of its popular 40-player raid dungeon Molten Core. The game's site features screenshots alongside concept art, and a trailer, even, with an 8-bit, pixelated version of the company's logo. We won't spoil the show for you, but the best bullet point for the game has to be 'Has sound'. Check it out and wait for your chance to pre-order!

The dev team for Stargate Worlds has decided to change the direction of the in-game armor. Apparently, this decision was based on how much everyone loved the human body armor seen in the SGW trailer. Due to that overwhelming love fest... all races will now have the same exact armor.

SGW Creative Director Chris Klug is ecstatic about the decision: "We'll have a lot more time to work on other ideas, such as Asgard golf." Oh fun... golf. Technical Director Demetrius Comes said, "It's going to so be much easier to code now that we will have only one kind of armor for all player characters."

Senior Marketing Manager Kevin Balentine chimed in with: "I don't think it's necessary to distinguish the different races by different armor sets." It seems there are other ways to distinguish species on the battlefield. In fact, they're painting the bad guys red and the good guys blue (see the above pic). Balentine, obviously stuck far too long with only his marketing companion cube as company, doesn't think that's ever been tried before.

Nope... not ever.

The good folks over at TR Vault have reportedly gotten their hands on an early preview of some of the goodies we have in store for us in patch 1.7, and boy will these changes knock your socks off! They went way beyond the Skitterin hybrid class Destination Games announced today, going all out with three additional hybrids, three new PAUs (check out the Exobiologists' sweet ride!), and a whole slew of weapon and class changes that should make any Tabula Rasa die-hard chuckle.

Among my favorites were changes to the Spy's blade that would increase both damage and range (!), the reduction in damage and increase in threat for the already woefully useless grenade launcher, and best of all, a new "poledance" emote for Exobiologists' clones to make them actually worth a darn in PvP combat, even just as a distraction. All we can say is poor, poor Exobiologists. Barbie cars and poledancing? April Fools' Day has not treated them kindly.

The gang running Dungeon Runners may have been down in the dungeons a bit too long. Weeks go by without much news (except for account issues) and BAM... we get four new "announcements" all in one morning. Lets muddle through them, shall we?

First off is the "announcement" about the new DR expansion pack called Pony Adventure, which "picks up where the original Dungeon Runners left off." It will add an abundance of new quests, dungeons, items and characters. According to Mark Tucker Lead Nutjob, er... Designer for DR: "We've always had a very strong passion for Ponies." Ooooooooook. Dungeon Runners: Pony Adventure will be available for free at some point in the future. Until then check out the preview cover for this disturbing expansion.

In a somewhat related "news item"... players (both members and non-members alike) running around the dungeons can - at this very moment - grab themselves a new pet for their in-game characters. Paancho may be small, but he's a feisty little thing. Act quickly though! You must claim him before the US government does... on April 15 no less.

Holy highway robbery!

NCsoft NorCal "announced" today that they're dropping a new feature into their superly duperly costumed heroes and villains game. Visual Sounds are cool words that pop up on the screen (both in games and famous caped crusading TV shows) based on the old school comic book technique known as onomatopoeia. It's the use of a word to replace a sound. The upcoming Issue 12, which has been renamed "Issue 12: Pow, Biff, Boom, Bam!" will include this all new system.

Brian Clayton, Executive Producer and head of the NCsoft NorCal office, said all their research shows that many gamers are building their own computers now, and sometimes they forget to buy speakers or headphones. This is their small way of helping those forgetful types. Matt "Positron" Miller, the Lead Designer on the CoX titles, is a big advocate of the theater of the mind and likened this to reading a book where you give the characters their own voices. Literally.

While players will be able to disable Visual Sounds... they shouldn't. Why? In order to make room for the visual sound files all actual in-game sounds are being removed from the players' hard drives. DOH!

We have to admit, Tobold's April Fools' joke is easily one of the better ones coming out today. Upon first glance his reasoning for the $5 dollar subscription bump seems somewhat plausible, citing rising power costs and the weakening dollar. However the real treat is beyond the joke, in the comments where 'Mike Morhaime' -- co-founder and current president of Blizzard -- makes a comment about the joke being a good idea and to wait for official announcement on the World of Warcraft website.

If that weren't enough, the director of Activision Blizzard Jean-René Fourtou mysteriously pops up in the comments afterwards and publicly fires Morhaime! Oh no, what will happen next? Ah, well then things take a truly inspired twist as the CEO of Electronic Arts John Riccitiello triumphantly appears to announce that Warhammer Online is actually coming out May 1st and then promptly thanks Actiblizzvision for allowing EA to scoop up their lost customers.

We thoroughly enjoyed the joke, as it's fairly surreal to see even fake versions of these people posting comments on a blog.

Have you ever wanted to be a Skitterin? Just lie around all day, eating, sleeping and gracefully avoiding the footfalls of soldiers running to and fro? That sure would be the life, wouldn't it? Well now you can with Tabula Rasa's newly-announced Skitterin Hybrid class! We're especially impressed with the artist's rendition, complete with acorn flail. I wonder if that does more damage than the Spy's blade?

NCSoft has unveiled a dandy of an April Fool's joke today on their official site. Apparently, there has been overwhelming feedback from the players in favor of creating a Skitterin hybrid class, so the devs thought it would be fun to play along. Be sure to head on over and check out the complete story behind the Skitterin Hybrid and how it came into existence. No, it's ok, it all happened in a lab.

Ryan Shwayder has apparently decided that typical development studios are simply too cumbersome, so he's looking to start his own studio and, taking a cue from Blizzard, reduce the business model from raid-sized to the much friendlier 10-man format. Evidently, this will help keep development costs well under the $1 billion mark recently cited by Activision's Bobby Kotick as the magic number it would take to dethrone WoW. The new studio, known as Mad Alchemist, is already hard at work designing a project code-named Vernal Equinox, which will be the culmination of their minimalist design philosophy.

Of course, if you want to tighten that belt, you have to lose some fat. Consequently, Shwayder's team had to cut some features from the Vernal Equinox design doc in order to accommodate their design philosophy. Since players always have so many complaints about things like the level grind, gear acquisition, class balance, and things like that, they're going to do away with them entirely. In fact, because downtime can also be so frustrating for players, they've decided to do away with multiplayer entirely. Vernal Equinox will be the first offline MMO!

We've got to give props to Ryan for delivering one of the first April Fools' blog posts today to actual make this blogger chuckle.