In the World of Warcraft forums, somebody had a screenshot they took while exploring underwater. The screenshot showed the wreckage of a Starcraft Battlecruiser :eek: which was wicked cool. This was quite believable at first, because there were tons of in-jokes in the game, and Blizzard loves to have little overlaps here and there (the Diablo/Zergling pets you get wtih the Collector’s edition for example). A couple of things made this hoax convincing:
1.) Blizzard likes to put easter eggs like this in their games.
2.) The location of the supposed Battlecruiser was far out in the ocean, and deep underwater. Now there are sizable stretches of empty sea (go TOO far and you start getting fatigued and eventually die though) and while exploring I noticed that some areas of the ocean are INSANELY deep (having my guy swim down for 30 minutes with no bottom in sight). To even find the location of the wreck would be nearly impossible, thus making it hard to confirm/deny the existance 100%.
3.)The game itself is vast, with many interesting inacessable areas. The GM’s can ban you if you are somewhere that you shouldn’t be. Some areas of mention- Old Ironforge, Ironforge Airport, certain areas of Teldrassil, and southern Silthilus. Everybody wants to see ‘what’s behind the curtain!’ and so it is kind of easy for people to buy the possibility of a Battlecruiser sitting in the bottom of the Great Sea somewhere in Azeroth.
As it turns out, it was a hoax. Some determined player matched the geography of the sea floor surrounding the supposed ship, and basically took a screenshot of where the ship should have been, had it existed. Thus it was confirmed to be a fake, some photoshop job. I was actually a little disappointed; I guess a big part of me wanted this to actually exist, and personally I would have rather been deluded into thinking it might be out there somwhere, rather than be proven that there is nothing! in the expanse of the Great Sea
In the original Everquest players could duel each other. When one person either died or fled, a message along the lines of “PlayerX has been defeated by PlayerY!” was sent out to everyone in the entire zone.
Clever players started making characters with names like Lag and Everquest, so during a stretch of bad lag and frequent zone crashes, frustrated players would be treated to “Everquest has been defeated by Lag!”
There were many, many of these. At first they were funny, but eventually they got old. There were some good ones though.
Now that I think about it, it’s wasn’t so much a hoax as an exploit of game mechanics.
The whole thing was set up by a guild on that server (whose name I don’t remember). Total hoax. If you look at the original video of the incident, most of the toons involved are already wearing equipment that drops off the mobs they were supposedly going to fight for the first time.
Not that I’m aware of. I’ve been playing WoW since Alpha and have been to several ‘off limits’ areas. The most thats ever happened to me is (in the Alpha/Beta) a big green Level ?? elemental mob (called Blizzard something usually) wacked me instantly. I’d need to see some additional info about banning for being somewhere you shouldn’t be…depending on what we are really talking about here. If you can actually get there (without using an exploit BTW) in the game world I can’t see how Blizzard could ban you…not unless they had warned you ahead of time not to go there (i.e. it was an exploit).
Most of the things I know were exploits for various MMORPGs. I remember a really cool one for UO where someone actually managed to wack the high lord during one of those speeches where the designer comes into the game and everyone ooo’s and ahhhh’s. It was pretty damn funny and caused a litteral riot in the online crowd (I joined in as I was a notorious PKer and, well, there was loot to be had once the guards were swamped trying to kill all the folks who were going nuts). Not really a hoax but one hell of a lot of fun. There were lots of those kinds of things in the early UO game before they ‘fixed’ things.
Blizzard reps have stated that it is a violation of ToS to access unfinished content. Generally these areas are not conventionally acessable and the only way to get there usually involves exploits and/or bugs.
Thats the incident I alluded too. I was there. It wasn’t a rogue…he was killed by a spell. Shortly after he died all hell broke loose. I understand the guy who did it was banned afterward…no idea if thats true or not or if he was perminently banned.
You know, if World of Warcraft ever has some event similar to this (say Medivh, controlled by a GM, shows up for a speech), the guy is going to be absolutely hounded considering the fate of Lord British.
I <heart> Leeeeeroooooy nnJeeeenkins! Someone’s set the Leeroy Jenkins soundtrack to a moby song, too. That’s ultra cool.
Can someone confirm or deny the WoW nude patch, too? Someone’s taken some clips and set it to a song, and it’s pretty damned funny but I’d like to know if it’s for reals or not.
It’s probably real but unofficial. Faking the video would actually be more trouble than hacking the undressed character skin to remove the underwear. There are known nude patches for Tomb Raider and The Sims (dunno about Sims 2), so it’s not without precedent. Unless it’s an official patch, which is extremely unlikely, only the player with the patch installed would see nude characters - other players would see the normal underwear.
You’re not allowed to go to the Ironforge airport? Damn. That was my shortcut for getting low level dorfs and gnomes over to Elflands without going through that big scary swamp filled with alligators.
Diablo and Diablo II are not quite MMORPGs, but they’re similar. During the heyday of Diablo, it was popular amongst some of the playerbase to try and convince newtypes to ‘access the secret cow level’.
The conditions of entry varied, but typically involved dumping all your stuff by the cow in the town and hitting Alt+F4. For those of you not familiar with Windows keyboard shortcuts, that combination closes the active window. So these newbies would drop everything they owned and close the game - instantly bankrupting them.
Pretty traditional practical joke, but what makes it cool was that in Diablo II, Blizzard added an actual Secret Cow Level.
I play Star Wars Galaxies, and the crafting system is pretty involved. There are all kinds of different resources in different categories (and a particular item can require something as generic as “organic” or something as specific as “Tatooinian Bristly Hide”). The general method of leveling up involves grinding items to gain the xp to learn the skills to reach Master.
Due to a game mechanic at the time (opening a Jedi required mastering certain hidden professions), many players kept coming onto the profession forums asking the fastest way to reach Master. Needless to say, they almost never checked the FAQ that every board had, so long-time forum readers started getting annoyed with these questions and started giving bogus info (although usually obviously bogus, and almost always linked back to the FAQ). My particular contribution involved the suggestion to go out and gather lots of Snipe hide. That went over well with those in on the joke.
And while it’s not really a hoax, the Fett’s Vette video (the second one listed, the first is a live concert) required help from a GM to make. The mandalorian armor, jetpack, and the speeder shown are all extremely difficult to acquire in-game. And at the time, the armor pieces came out a random color, so a coordinated suit was nigh-impossible. The player was loaned the equipment on the SWG test server for the sole purpose of the video.
In EQ they had a tradition of doing weird stuff around Halloween/April Fools day. One April Fools day, they released a huge patch message basically nerfing (downgrading in power) of several classes and items. It caused such an uproar that EQ stopped doing it. It was always great to see people log on and just be pissed as hell and not realize it was a joke.
“Wizards will receive a nerf in the Root line of spells as they were using it to immobilze mobs.”
