Blizzard April Fools Roundup

Blizzard went all out this year for the day of pranks, but WoW related was the patch notes for 6.1.4: Check them out after the break!




New Feature: T.I.N.D.R. Box

• Upgrade your level 100 Followers with this new item and allow them to search for true love!
• Read more on this upcoming feature in our recent announcement.

New Master Looting Options

• To alleviate social issues related to the Master Looter functionality, we've expanded the option to offer four distinct choices:
  
  • Master Looter
    
    • Unchanged
  • Submissive Looter
    
    • As the Submissive Looter, you'll sign a contract with your raid allowing you to explore your boss-killing desires safely, with due respect and regard for one's needs, one's limits, and one's well-being.
    • Per the contract, you'll be given whatever loot the rest of the raid decides you get, and say thank you. Raid members can decide whether they like the gear you're already wearing and, if not, demand that you disenchant it.
    • A new Safe Word option can be set through your Battle.net account settings that immediately ends the raid upon entering it into chat.
  • Passive Aggressive Looter
    
    • The Raid Leader agrees to divvy up loot more or less fairly, but will make catty comments about how this raid group will give loot to "just anyone."
    • Note: This setting will also auto-whisper raid members as they join that if they don't like it, they can lead their own raid.
  • MS>OS
    
    • No different than Master Looter, but everyone keeps asking for it, so here you go. Knock yourselves out.

Warcraft: The Movie: The Game: The Movie

• In a world with noble warriors, spirit healers, and arcane powers, a movie industry is brewing. Catch your favorite Warcraft characters acting as other Warcraft characters in a fictional world within a fictional world in Warcraft: The Movie: The Game: The Movie.

General

• In addition to the items you forgot to pick up, the Postmaster will now mail you special offers on great deals from various vendors around Azeroth.
• As an addition to the recent account-wide ignore feature, the game will now also present a series of flashes and symbols to make you forget the ignored player ever existed. We promise not to use this for any other reason, as far as you know.
• To curb confusion over whether to call them Undead or Forsaken, Sylvanas's faction is now simply referred to as Walkers.
• We accidentally put the Dance Studio back in the game for a little while, but it's been removed again. That was a close one.
• Twitter integration now has a 50% increased chance of making you feel out of touch with whatever the hell kids are doing these days.
• Patches will now be given titles that are more appropriate for today's internet audience, beginning with Patch 6.2: Conquer the Iron Horde Using This One Weird Old Trick.
• All active World of Warcraft subscribers are now also game design interns. Please be sure to use the correct cover sheets for your DPS reports. Also, we're gonna need you to come in on Saturday, mm'kay?
• Stormwind Park
  
  • [editor's note: Remember to do something with this.]
• We've checked on the members of the band Fun, and they are alive and well despite forum claims to the contrary.
• The Hybrid Tax has been reworked and is now a Hybrid Rebate, providing state funded incentives and cash back at participating dealerships on approved credit.
• These patch notes were written by lead game designers, producers, engineers, and artists, instead of having them work on important new changes and features.

Forums

• Kierkegaardian Vote System: You can now expand the down vote display to see who down voted a post, then choose whether or not to down vote their down vote. The end result is that nothing changes. There are two possible situations—one can either do this or that. Our honest opinion and our friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it—you will regret both. It's like, the tyrant dies and his rule is over; the martyr dies and his rule begins.
  
  • Nothing after this bullet matters.

Races

• Draenei
  
  • Gift of the Naaru now actually gives other players a gift. However, as beings of pure light, they probably got you a rainbow, or something? You should make them a list.
• Gnome
  
  • Gnomes can now equip and wear goggles regardless of class or profession requirements. However, the goggles do nothing.
• Human
  
  • Every Man for Himself has been redesigned. It now grants Humans a third trinket slot.
• Orc
  
  • Orcs now receive a state-funded rebate for being more "green."
• Walker
  
  • Corrected an error where Walkers were able to gain benefits from eating and drinking.
• Worgen
  
  • All Worgen characters must now wear a collar and carry around little blue baggies.

Classes
Death Knights

• Mastery: Blood Shield has been renamed to Mastery: Health Shield, because ew.
• Breath of Sindragosa is now minty-fresh.
• Bone Shield: now with 50% more calcium!
• The Death Knight unique skin colors have been made darker in response to player requests for darker Knights.
• Dark Simulacrum is now 37% easier to pronounce.
• Mind Freeze now renders the target unconscious and causes them to slowly turn to ice, unless you erase their memory of the incident and spend the rest of your life in seclusion.
• Outbreak no longer applies Blood Plague and Frost Fever. Instead, it applies a new, airborne version of a virus first encountered 30 years ago. Enemy players will have to work together to develop a new serum to cure the virus before the military bombs the whole city.

Druids

• Balance has been redesigned. The damage you deal is now variable, based on the current number of threads on the forums demanding nerfs or buffs.
• Remove Corruption can no longer be cast on the members of your guild's loot council.
• Cyclone is now dispellable, but only by other Druids.
• Druids in Tree of Life form will now bear fruit.
• The Moonkin model has been updated, but it's too adorable to kill, so we aren't going to implement it. It's pretty great, though.
• Gift of the Wild has returned. It now causes the casting Druid to leave a freshly-killed bird or rodent on the doorstep of the target player's Town Hall.
• New form: Meatsquatch. Transforms the caster into a creature that's half hamburger, half Yeti. Abilities include Devour Meat and Sabotage Cooking. MEATSQUATCH!

Hunters

• Seem fine.

Mages

• Alter Time will now automatically update for Daylight Savings.
• Overpowered has been nerfed for obvious reasons.
• Blink's tooltip has been updated to: "Teleports the caster directly into the nearest rock, shrub, or fence." Functionality unchanged.
• Due to drought, Conjured Water is now being rationed.
• Invisibility can now only be used when no one is looking, including the Mage.
• Mage Armor has an even newer, more unique icon.
• To better illustrate the difference in effectiveness, Fireball has been renamed "Ball of Fire" and Pyroblast has been renamed "Great Ball of Fire." Goodness gracious!
• Despite their many heroic deeds over the years, player Mages are still nowhere near as cool as Jaina or Khadgar.
  
  • Seriously, did you see what Khadgar did with the dam in Tanaan Jungle?
  • All of the elements were like FWOOOM and then he threw them at it like KAPOW and all the water went WOOOOSH.
  • It was awesome.

Monks

• Crackling Jade Lightning still exists.
• Serenity now causes the caster to don a brown coat and get really sad about Wash.
• Storm, Earth, and Fire has had its powers magnified, and can now be used on a total of 5 targets. Because of this change, it's been renamed to "Earth, Fire, Wind, Water, and Heart."
• Monks can now activate a brief montage cutscene that shows their character farming materials for flasks and food, reading up on boss encounters, and practicing their rotations, instead of having to actually do any of those things.
• Monks now automatically Roll everywhere instead of running while out of combat.
• Energizing Brew has been renamed to Red Ox. The effects remain the same, but it gives the Monk wings when activated.
• Abilities without the words "Chi" or "Zen" in their name have been fixed to correctly have one or both. Enjoy Spinning Zen Crane Chi Kick.

Paladins

• Empowered Seals no longer causes the user to belt out "Kiss From a Rose" at the top of their lungs.
• After several years of deliberations, the Templar has finally reached a Verdict.
• Inquisition is back. Isn't that surprising? No one expects Inquisition!
• Blinding Light now causes affected players to rev up like a deuce, whatever that means.
• Execution Sentence has been commuted and replaced with Life Imprisonment.
• In an effort to provide a friendlier image, the Order of the Silver Hand has designated several Raids, Dungeons, and Battlegrounds as "Judgment-Free Zones." While in one of these zones, all Paladins will have their Judgment spells disabled.

Priests

• Leap of Faith can no longer be used on players channeling Hearthstone.
• Leap of Faith can no longer be used when the Priest is standing next to a cliff.
• Leap of Faith can no longer be used on players on or near elevators.
• Priests are now 80% less annoying.
• Spirit Shell now melts in your mouth, not in your hand.
• Spectral Guise no longer summons a bunch of creepy ghost dudes to follow you around. We misread it, sorry.
• Angelic Feathers can now be used to tickle sleeping party members.
• Instead of granting vision of the surrounding area, Mind Vision now allows the Priest to look into their target's deepest thoughts. Not recommended for use on King Varian. Dude's got issues.

Rogues

• After earning enough Combo Points, the Rogue's next finisher will include fries and a drink.
• Distract can now be used on people who write patch no... ooh, shiny!
• Due to Ravenholdt's increased need for secrecy, all further Rogue updates will be presented using invisible ink.

Shaman

• Grounding Totem now causes party members to reflect on their life choices and consider that maybe quitting their job to write that novel wasn’t the best idea.
• Capacitor Totem is what makes time travel possible.
• Lightning Bolt can now only be cast while moving. Stopping or standing still will interrupt the cast.
• Using the /kiss emote on Hexed targets will now cause the effect to end immediately, and you're just going to have to live with that.
• New ability: Water Shock. Used by chefs to keep noodles from overcooking.
• Ascendance will now properly make the Shaman gradually ascend in the air during its duration.
• Tremor Totem now has a chance to summon a giant worm and/or Kevin Bacon.
• Bloodlust has been renamed Heroism.
• Heroism has been renamed Bloodlust.
• Unleash Life, uh... finds a way.

Warlocks

• Cataclysm has finally upgraded to Warlords of Draenor.
• Due to the events in the Warlords of Draenor opening cinematic, Mannoroth's Fury is significantly less furious.
• Warlocks can now find and complete an epic, 47-step quest to earn Chromatic Fire. Finally, you can experience the true essence of the Warlock class: rainbows!
• Chaos Bolt can no longer be targeted. Chaos Bolt does what it wants. You're not Chaos Bolt's dad!
• Dark Soul has been completely redesigned and made way more difficult to use, but we're not going to tell you how. You're going to have to figure out Dark Soul for yourself.
• In addition to no longer generating Burning Embers, Rain of Fire no longer deals damage.
• The Destruction passive Backdraft continues to remind you of that weird Kurt Russell movie about firefighters.

Warriors

• Hamstring has been removed and replaced with a new ability called Ham Sandwich. Sorry about that, one of our designers got hungry.
• Spell Reflection. R, E, F, L, E, C, T, I, O, N. Reflection.
• Warriors who use Whirlwind immediately after Bladestorm will get really dizzy.
• Gladiator Stance has been made 55% more entertaining.
• Due to increased concerns from their coworkers, all Warriors are now required to take Anger Management.

Garrisons

• Followers' Followers: Your Followers have gained so much stature that they've started to attract Followers of their own. Followers' Followers will now appear in your Garrison, and your Followers will be able to send their Followers on Missions.
  
  • The new Followers' Mission Table will appear behind your town hall. This object is not clickable by you, but your Followers will go to it when you send them on Missions, and soon thereafter, you'll see your Followers' Followers walking out of your Garrison.
  • Your Followers will receive rewards from the missions your Followers' Followers return from, but we have no idea what they are and they aren't telling us.
• The S.E.L.F.I.E. camera mission "Field Photography" is not appearing for all players due to its random nature. We didn't change anything; we just wanted to point out what random means.
• In order to comply with a new noise ordinance on Draenor, Garrison Jukeboxes will no longer play after 10 p.m.
• Followers can borrow toys from your collection to play with while waiting for new missions. They won't put them back, though. Seriously, there's going to be toys everywhere.
• After sending max-level epic Followers on XP missions, you can rush outside to see them leaving your Garrison, and questioning why they continue to put up with you.
• New Follower Trait: Binge Watching. Causes the follower to completely disappear from your Garrison for the entire weekend whenever a new season of House of Cards releases, and then never shut up about it once they return.
• Players may now freely travel from their Garrison.

Quests

• New Quest Hub: Terminus
  
  • Sanctuary for all. Community for all. Those who arrive, survive.
  • To get to Terminus, pick up the quest "You're the Butcher or You're the Cattle" from Grick Rimes in Stormwind or Orgrimmar and follow the tracks. This quest is unavailable to Walkers.
  • Complete quests and earn reputation with the Terminants to gain access to the Walker’s "Cannibalize" racial ability.
• To alleviate confusion between franchises, the quest "Trouble at the Overwatch" has been renamed. It is now called "Trouble at the Hearthstone." Wait, no. "Trouble at the Heroes of the Storm." Argh, this is hard.
• The Legendary quest "Draenor’s Secret Power" was incorrectly requiring 4986 Apexis Crystals, and has been corrected down to the intended 4983 Apexis Crystals. We have no idea what Khadgar's been doing with the extra 3...
• Senior Historian Evelyna on the Timeless Isle now only asks the Mur'ghoul question.
• The quest item Fox Poop should no longer appear for players who don't have that quest. Players who do have that quest should just get it over with, it's not that bad.

PvP

• Players now take 10% less damage in PvP.
• A number of Crowd Control (CC) changes have been made. Consult your class trainers before using CC.
  
  • Only use CC when you need it.
  • If your CC lasts longer than four hours, seek immediate medical attention.
• Killing the enemy faction's leader in Ashran now awards 16 Conquest Points.
• All CC effects have had their durations reduced by 33%.
• Killing the enemy faction's leader in Ashran no longer awards Conquest Points, and instead awards 150 Artifact Fragments.
• Ashran events now begin when you least expect them to.
• All CC effects have had their cooldowns reduced by 33%.
• Players now deal 10% more damage in PvP.
• Tanks no longer take extra damage in PvP, but instead have to play with their hands tied behind their back.
• Killing the enemy faction's leader in Ashran no longer awards Artifact Fragments, and instead awards 219 Apexis Crystals.
• The Battle for Gilneas has been renamed "The Battle for the Waterworks."
• All CC effects have had their effects increased by 33%. For example, Fear is now 33% scarier, and Cyclone is now 33% windier.
• Players now act like they take 10% less damage in PvP, but they really don't. They're just kidding around.
• Fixed an issue causing some classes and specs to be completely broken in PvP.
• A new 1v1 bracket has been added to the game: Rated Ashran.
• Killing the enemy faction's leader in Ashran no longer awards anything, because the satisfaction of victory should be its own reward, damn it.

Raids & Dungeons

• Onyxia has seen a full recovery, and is Breathing a Deep sigh of relief.
• To avoid confusion between the Blackrock Mountain zone in World of Warcraft and the upcoming Blackrock Mountain Adventure for Hearthstone, we're changing the name of Blackrock Mountain to Spooky Dark Lava Holes.
  
  • All enemies and bosses within Spooky Dark Lava Holes have had their health and damage increased substantially to try to make them feel better about it.
• Support for VR hardware has been added, but only to the Grimrail Depot dungeon and Hans'gar & Franzok raid encounter.
• Due to the extensive PvP changes in patch 6.1.4, all players have been nerfed when in raid combat. That's how that works, right?

Pet Battles

• The Pet Battle Surrender ability has been renamed to Rage Quit.
• Cat pets will now constantly appear under foot and trip you when you attempt to walk anywhere.
• Players can now use the /pet emote to earn experience with their combat pets. While targeting a summoned pet, simply use the /pet emote over and over which will show you gently giving it some much needed attention while earning a small amount of experience for each use. We're not sure what this does for the mechanical and undead pets, but just go with it.
• Beaver-type battle pets' teeth are working again.

Professions

• New Primary Profession: Character Model
  
  • We're pretty sure there's a lot more to life than being really, really ridiculously good looking, but you no longer need to find out what that is.
  • Master models can learn the Ambi-turn ability, allowing you to further customize your runway walk and go for the "I Turned Left!" achievement.
  • When taking the Character Model profession, you can still learn to do other stuff good too, because you're so hot right now.
• Players at max cooking will no longer be able to create food from recipes. Instead, you must use random ingredients from a mystery basket. You’ll have a limited time to assemble a full three-course meal using ingredients like orange soda, marshmallow crème, and gefilte fish. Cooks unable to produce a tasty meal with the ingredients provided will be Cleaved.
• "Lightly Fried Lurker" and "Spicy Fried Herring" can no longer be crafted in level 90+ zones, as frying is not allowed in Draenor.
• The last person still farming Embersilk Cloth in Molten Front has been mailed a bunch of it.

UI

• The Group Finder has been redesigned. It can now be used to figure out where the hell the other half of your raid is 10 minutes after you were supposed to have started.
• By popular request, you can now make your shoulders invisible! Which seems really weird, but if you want to walk around with your arms detached from your body, okay.
• A dropdown menu has been added to the Death Recap screen, so you can immediately tweet your favorite developer about how you died.

Items

• Clothing vendors across Azeroth now offer a unique dress for sale that is either blue and black or white and gold depending on some kind of science stuff we still don't understand.
• Savage Feasts now stack. Literally. Make forts and stuff.
• To make it easier to tell whether an item is an upgrade or not, Item Levels have been converted to use the Dewey Decimal System.
• We've rounded off all of the stats on every item in the game to the nearest 10, moved the decimal one place to the left, and doubled it. That's how we calculate our tips, so we're pretty sure it'll work.
• The items Filthy Paw, Filth-Contaminated Gem, Choker of Filthy Diamonds, and Filth-Encrusted Tooth have all been given a dirtier sheen, as intended.

Bugs

• Fixed Curious Wolvar Pup's curiosity.
• The short-lived Autocorrect feature in chat has been disabled again after it caused a power substation meltdown near one of our datacenters.
• Fixed a bug whereby it was only possible to max out Archaeology by accruing thousands of gold in student loans.
• Fixed a crash that was being caused by badboys doing certain badboy things.
• All savage savagery in Draenor has been savaged by 6-8 savages from the Savage Lands. We apologize for any confusion this may have caused.
• Players who literally can't even should be able to literally even again.