You Might Think This Is Funny...

As I was saying to my mother on the phone this morning, I loved April Fools Day when I was a child but I'd about had enough of it before I was fourteen. There's not really much of an excuse to carry on the tradition into adulthood unless it's to entertain and amuse your kids (Or grandkids.) by letting them believe they've put one over on you.

That said, whether I appreciate efforts to celebrate the First of April in the games I play depends on how well-integrated the jokes are within the milieu and if I get anything worth having. There have been a few good ones in various games over the years, although time blurs the details. 

I think the killer bunnies in EverQuest might have been an April Fool gag. I still have the bunny hat from that on someone. The most celebrated April 1st in MMORPGs, though, has to be the time Guild Wars 2 gave us Super Adventure Box. I consider that a mixed blessing although it gave me some good viewing figures for the blog back in 2013.

I'm not playing any MMORPGs in a meaningful way right now so I can't say what's being done to mark the day in any of them. I do know EverQuest II always runs Bristlebane Day across the end of March/beginning of April and a quick look at the website tells me this year is no different. Today is the Lord of Misrule's highest holy day so there will be a few one-day-only quests but it looks like the main event is old Bristly's avatar turning up for the ongoing anniversary celebrations.

I really ought to look into doing something for those. The year is slipping away and I've barely participated. I haven't even been collecting my monthly cash-shop giveaway. This month it's yet another baby dragon. I may have as many of those as I need, although this one is cute.

As for all the other MMORPGs on my theoretical playlist, I don't have a clue. Time was when I would have logged in to see what all of them were giving away but I'm not feeling the need to add extra virtual clutter right now. If anything, I could do with getting rid of some.

One game I will not be revisiting just at the moment is Palworld. I dropped it like a hot brick the second Nightingale launched and I haven't missed it for a moment. Back then, I was beginning to have existential doubts about the underpinning philosophy of Pocketpair's Pokemon-inspired survival shooter and passing time hasn't ameloriated my concerns. 

I had some serious questions then about where the game might be going. The video they've come up with as an April Fool certainly isn't offering any easy answers.

In a way, I kind of admire the way that video leans into so many of the things that feel wrong about Palworld. It's hard to deny the consistency of their vision. They've made it quite clear that "darker themes" are part of the Pocketpair brief.

So far that already includes exploitation, slavery, animal cruelty and cannibalistic murder so I guess we ought not to be surprised they're adding questionable sexual politics to the list. The video is borderline acceptable by video game standards but the gloss Pocketpair have given it in the description tips things over the edge. 

As if high school dating sims weren't already difficult territory to navigate, imagine an "adult" version with nudity, where some of the students are human and others are talking animals, and the dating options available include "kill and eat". That's not going to be problematic at all. 

It's also basically Beastars, so there's another of those "Whose idea was this anyway?" debates to be had, too. And yet, who wants to bet against a real game coming out of all this?

NME, where I read the news, also ran a report about an infinitely more wholesome April Fool offered by the makers of Palworld's widely recognized, if officially unacknowledged, inspiration, Pokémon. In a genuinely funny, clever and entertaining four-minute video, complete with all the production values you'd expect of a megacorp, Nintendo give us the ultimate in cozy competition - the Pokémon Sleep World Champions Tournament!

I realize Pokémon isn't exactly free of moral tarpits but I know which of those two videos I feel more comfortable watching. Or indeed comfortable at all.

No doubt there are lots more goofy, guffaw-filled, gimmicky gags going around the gaming landscape today but that's enough for me for one year. More than enough, actually.

Until they make us do it again next time, here's wishing everyone a Happy April Fools. 

(Is that a thing yet? If not, it will be.)

"Honestly, This Writer Blows..."

There's a post from AI Weirdness about AI-generated April Fools' pranks in the blog roll today. It links to a another post and that post links to a website called talktotransformer.com and that goes to something called InferKit, which is a free demo. I thought it might be amusing to have it guest-write today's post.

You get 10,000 free characters a week. I set it to the maximum per attempt, one thousand, gave it a draft version of the opening paragraph above and let it roll.

The result was utterly bizarre. It was all about tennis, a detailed report of certain named players' histories and standings. I wiped that, fiddled with some settings, then tried again. This time I asked for something about video games and music and television.

This is what I got.

Hey, anyone remember years ago, it felt like years ago but was probably just 5 years ago, the long Game Boy advertisement with the creepy ringtone, the one after the title? Well, if not, it went a little something like this: "When it comes to Japanese video games, do you work to live, or die to live?"

Super Mario Land 2 Mario’s mastered everything he knew about being a Badass, you might say. But life is a bitch, you know!

Oh, that’s right, that’s what Call of Duty doesn’t get.

In this game there’s no survivors. You land on the bottom screen of the screen, and before you can use your fancy hand cannons or your righteous fists, Bowser appears on the moving screen.

“Well, well! I see someone’s pulled their dad’s minivan into my stage! How rude.” He swiftly moves to the sound effects menu: “BANG!” BOOM! BANG! BANG! “DISGUSTING!” “I HATE you!”

Oh yeah, pretty personal stuff there. Bowser’s got a thing against children, or something.

DO YOU EVER WANT TO RUN INTO MY LAWN AND TELL ME TO SHUT THE HELL UP? WHAT AM I, A GOON?

Hey, were you just listening to some bad music? Because I’m here to ensure that not only your ears, but also your joystick, are sufficiently dented by Bowser’s deathsticks.

I think Bowser would be a good foil for Ghostbusters. Think about it: a famous ghost has to contend with the ghosts of each mode’s Mario.

Excellent. Next, my friends are supposed to break into the attic level where the ghosts are congregating for protection.

THINGS ARE GETTING BIGGER, BRAINS!

Pause the movie!

It’s a very big bother trying to write all of these horror movie posters, no one can seem to keep up with the continuity. Let me put my hand up: I once saw the Shrubman family wandering through a cornfield for no reason whatsoever. And I thought I was hallucinating. But now, I can’t go downstairs in my apartment because Dr. Moreau’s trying to lure and devour me.

It really doesn’t matter what this movie does, though, as long as Dr. Moreau traps the wild toads in there too and makes all the houseboarders their dinner…
THINGS ARE GONNA GET BIG, EYEE!

I don’t think Krillin liked being psychoanalyzed. You know what, he probably liked it, so take the air horns off there.

The pace of this level is very fast: you have to punch a whole lot of ghosts in a short period of time, which is a real departure from most of the game: you’re normally sat around sipping Super Mushroom juice and reading otome.

“I can read if I wanna, thank you very much.”

Now that’s respect. In addition to the justifications your girlfriend may have given you prior, keeping a dark poster open with morbid illustrations helps out too. Can’t believe I ever fought you for this.

Cool story, bro, but did my ego really need a stroke? Haven’t you moved on to better things, like drawing stick figures while using your Daemon Powers?

Also: “We aren’t necessarily in the business of coercing people into joining our DYNAMITE TIN POT.”

What? Can’t they just go on holiday at the same time as me? Or shorten work hours so I can spend more time with them?

Honestly, this writer blows, I can’t believe it. I mean, check out this form I filled out: “I’m a complete wussy for Capcom USA’s initial English dubbing of Resident Evil 2. But give me that English dub of this sequel with the voice overs by two guys sitting in rubber doughnut chairs who were so good that their roles were immediately recast (Amadio, Anderson, Sjoklany).” You can go on as long as you want, ’cause you’re doing a poor job of proving this stuff just makes you seem like an eccentric old fart in a virtual world.

This section has about three hours of legless Mario to it. Damn straight!

I know, I understand your pain. Just get yourself one of those crutches and a note saying you tried out for Cheers and didn’t get it.

Wow, what a downer.

Right. I tried to buy Roy Mustang’s real name on an episode of Millennium Quake, but I missed the deadline. We should probably sue the...

And that's about enough of that.

To get a coherent piece long enough for a post, I cut and pasted the first thousand characters and fed it back in as the seed for the second thousand, then used the two thousand character result as the seed for the third. Each section follows on seamlessly from the one before but as you read the whole thing you can sense the degradation of logic and meaning as the AI feeds on itself.

I thought the post probably needed some illustrations so I fired up our old friend Artflow and put in a few choice phrases from the piece. The results were distinctly underwhelming so I googled "free ai image generators" and tried a few.

It wasn't much of an improvement. Or indeed any improvement. Mostly they were useless. Eventually I got one or two I was willing to use. The four-legged oyster catcher is nightmare fuel but at least there's a cute puppy.

I did think of just putting the AI-generated text and images up as a post without explanation or comment as an actual April Fool's joke but I'm not really fond of those so instead, in the zeitgeisty spirit of talking about talking about things instead of actually talking about them (I stole that from something I read yesterday. I think it was in one of the Atlantic articles. It's good, isn't it?), here's a post about April's Fools jokes that's not in itself an April Fool's joke even though it kind of is.

Enjoy!

Hey, anyone remember years ago, it felt like years ago but was probably just 5 years ago, the long Game Boy advertisement with the creepy ringtone, the one after the title? Well, if not, it went a little something like this: "When it comes to Japanese video games, do you work to live, or die to live?" Super Mario Land 2 Mario’s mastered everything he knew about being a Badass, you might say. But life is a bitch, you know! Oh, that’s right, that’s what Call of Duty doesn’t get. In this game there’s no survivors. You land on the bottom screen of the screen, and before you can use your fancy hand cannons or your righteous fists, Bowser appears on the moving screen. “Well, well! I see someone’s pulled their dad’s minivan into my stage! How rude.” He swiftly moves to the sound effects menu: “BANG!” BOOM! BANG! BANG! “DISGUSTING!” “I HATE you!” Oh yeah, pretty personal stuff there. Bowser’s got a thing against children, or something. DO YOU EVER WANT TO RUN INTO MY LAWN AND TELL ME TO SHUT THE HELL UP? WHAT AM I, A GOON? Hey, were you just listening to some bad music? Because I’m here to ensure that not only your ears, but also your joystick, are sufficiently dented by Bowser’s deathsticks. I think Bowser would be a good foil for Ghostbusters. Think about it: a famous ghost has to contend with the ghosts of each mode’s Mario. Excellent. Next, my friends are supposed to break into the attic level where the ghosts are congregating for protection. THINGS ARE GETTING BIGGER, BRAINS! Pause the movie! It’s a very big bother trying to write all of these horror movie posters, no one can seem to keep up with the continuity. Let me put my hand up: I once saw the Shrubman family wandering through a cornfield for no reason whatsoever. And I thought I was hallucinating. But now, I can’t go downstairs in my apartment because Dr. Moreau’s trying to lure and devour me. It really doesn’t matter what this movie does, though, as long as Dr. Moreau traps the wild toads in there too and makes all the houseboarders their dinner… THINGS ARE GONNA GET BIG, EYEE! I don’t think Krillin liked being psychoanalyzed. You know what, he probably liked it, so take the air horns off there. The pace of this level is very fast: you have to punch a whole lot of ghosts in a short period of time, which is a real departure from most of the game: you’re normally sat around sipping Super Mushroom juice and reading otome. “I can read if I wanna, thank you very much.” Now that’s respect. In addition to the justifications your girlfriend may have given you prior, keeping a dark poster open with morbid illustrations helps out too. Can’t believe I ever fought you for this. Cool story, bro, but did my ego really need a stroke? Haven’t you moved on to better things, like drawing stick figures while using your Daemon Powers? Also: “We aren’t necessarily in the business of coercing people into joining our DYNAMITE TIN POT.” What? Can’t they just go on holiday at the same time as me? Or shorten work hours so I can spend more time with them? Honestly, this writer blows, I can’t believe it. I mean, check out this form I filled out: “I’m a complete wussy for Capcom USA’s initial English dubbing of Resident Evil 2. But give me that English dub of this sequel with the voice overs by two guys sitting in rubber doughnut chairs who were so good that their roles were immediately recast (Amadio, Anderson, Sjoklany).” You can go on as long as you want, ’cause you’re doing a poor job of proving this stuff just makes you seem like an eccentric old fart in a virtual world. This section has about three hours of legless Mario to it. Damn straight! I know, I understand your pain. Just get yourself one of those crutches and a note saying you tried out for Cheers and didn’t get it. Wow, what a downer. Right. I tried to buy Roy Mustang’s real name on an episode of Millennium Quake, but I missed the deadline. We should probably sue the

She Really Shake You Donkey Up

Before Valheim appeared out of nowhere back in February, I'd been spending a fair amount of time in Black Desert Online. I'd updated all my details in preparation for the switch from Kakao to Pearl Abyss and I'd been running around somewhat aimlessly with my Shai, doing a bit of levelling here, a bit of exploring there...

It was fun. I wasn't planning on stopping. And then I stopped.

I kept meaning to get back to whatever it was I thought I was doing there but it never happened. The handover came and went and I still didn't log in. Then, eventually, the viking stranglehold began to lose its grip. And I saw this:

Who could resist the lure of a flying donkey? Well, I could, apparently, at least for a while. The event began on March 31st but it wasn't until today that I finally got around to taking a look at it.

But first I had to patch. Because of course I had to patch. Black Desert's an mmorpg. It couldn't possibly go a couple of months without adding a few gigabytes of data to my overloaded hard drive, could it? 4.27GB to be precise.

Seriously, that's four Valheims. What did they add? I have no clue.

As you can see, the counter didn't work. It sat determinedly at 1% the entire time and then the Patching button flipped to Play and in I went. Gives you confidence in the new owners, doesn't it?

The first thing that greeted me was a screenful of login rewards and other freebies. I'm starting to think I may be past the point of appreciating these. It was less than a couple of years ago that I was praising Riders of Icarus for its incredibly generous login bonuses and I do still very much enjoy a good freebie, but that old saw about it being possible to have too much of a good thing is starting to sound a little less ridiculous to me than it once did.

Other than that, Black Desert isn't the worst mmorpg to come back to after a break and I had only been away for a matter of weeks. All the same, it still took me a good while to get to grips with the UI and the controls again. 

It's as fussy-looking a game as I can remember on the fornt end. Did you know that the default UI has thirty-seven non-combat icons? Well, mine does. Thirty-seven! And doing anything seems to take more keys than feels reasonable. It's a game for octopuses. Octopi. Octopodes. Squid.

Enough of all that. On with the main event. Flying donkeys!

The event I'd come for requires you to play your Shai character and that your Shai character be riding her donkey. The first part was easy enough. She's my main character anyway. The second part turned out to be a little more problematic.

For some reason that I can't even begin to imagine, last time I played I ran her all the way out to Trent. Maybe I needed something out of the bank there? I don't know. Oh, it seems I can imagine it after all... Anyway, it was a fifteen-minute run back to Velia, which was where she'd parked the donkey.

BDO has some big distances to cover but it's a pleasure to do them if you're in the mood. I just set the route on the map, hit "T" for autotravel (once I'd looked up which key it was), switched the UI off and sat back. It's like watching a travel video. Very relaxing.

At the stable I got my donkey back and climbed on. It took me a minute to remember how to get him moving but once we were going at a canter I hit space to see him glide. He sprouted wings and a shower of stars flew out. It was like he was the main event at a six-year old princess's birthday party.

And did he glide? Not he did not!

He juddered along like... well, like a donkey with a pair of papier-mache wings strapped to his back and a box of cheap fireworks exploding in his saddlebags. It was inelegant to say the least.

I ran along the road like that for a while, failing to get airborne. I took a bunch of screenshots, all from behind. It wasn't getting me anywhere, figuratively or literally.

I'd read there was a series of quests to go with the event so I looked that up. It starts at Casta Farm. It wasn't far so I set a route on the map and tried to autopath there, only I would keep trying to make him glide so of course the pathing broke. I nearly ended up in the sea at one point.

I have to say, the screenshots make the whole thing look far more amazing than it was. It looks almost magical here but at the time it felt more like riding a faulty ride-on mower over a field full of rocks.

I got there in the end, somehow. You have to be mounted on a donkey to get the quest or the NPC won't even speak to you. That was a challenge in itself. Donkeys have momentum, inertia and a mind of their own.

The quest is a time trial in which you run from Herar the questgiver to... Herar the questgiver. How he gets from where he is to where you find him I have no idea. I assume he has a teleporter. I wish I did.

On the first run I drowned my donkey in a river. I wasn't expecting to succeed that time. I was pretty pleased with myself just for working out where I had to go. 

Since the whole point of the event was having a flying (okay, gliding) donkey I figured I'd go as the crow flies rather than following the road and just glide over anything in the way. When I came out of a stand of trees and found myself hurtling over a cliff I didn't panic. I hit the space-bar twice to double jump and "E" to glide just like I'd seen in the instructions. 

My donkey and my shai cruised gently over the river, right into the cliffs opposite. They hit about two-thirds of the way up and fell into the water. The donkey went under and vanished. My shai managed to struggle to shore although it was a close call.  

I ran her all the way back to the stables in Velia, paid the stable guy a hundred thousand silver to recover the donkey and set off to try again. The route back had taken me past the point where the quest would have ended and even with the donkey dead in a ditch I'd only missed the timer by a few seconds so I was optimistic for the second attempt.

And rightly so. This time I stuck to the road, crossed the river by bridge and made it with thirty seconds to spare. Which was just as well because it took me nearly that long to manoeuver the donkey into talking distance for the hand-in.

I nearly called it a day right then. I don't like timed quests much and I didn't want to push my luck. In the end I thought I might as well give it a go so I took the second quest and found it wasn't on a timer at all. I  was able to meander over to where Herar had magically transported himself at my own pace.

I found him, looking like a member of an elven Killing Joke tribute band, all mohawk, pointy ears and pantaloons, standing next to a couple of mountain goats on the edge of a high escarpment. Okay, I know what's going on here, I thought to myself. He expects me to ride my donkey off the bloody cliff. Well, more fool him. I've already done that!

So I took the quest and rode my donkey off the cliff. Why the hell not? And to my utter amazement I managed to get the creature to glide, after a fashion, all the way down without either of us dying. 

I would not say it was thrilling or exhillarating or a magical experience of any kind. Okay, alright, a donkey with wings is de facto magical. I guess you have to give them that. 

Compared to gliding in... well... in any other game I have ever played that had gliding in it, though, this was clunky and daft. But then, it is an April Fools event. What did I expect?

It did, however, work. I carried on in a bee line for the marker. There were a couple more small dips. We glided down those. There were several walls and fences. We glided over them. The quest allowed two minutes and we did it with time to spare.

The rewards seemed fair for the effort involved. Food and drink that give ten minute buffs to various kinds of mount experience. I'd have liked a title (Donkey Dropper, maybe) but you can't have everything.

The event runs for another week, finishing on the 14th. It's definitely worth doing if you have a Shai although I don't think I'd go so far as to make one just to do it.

As for flying donkeys as a general mode of transport, I think I'll pass. Just give me an actual glider and we'll call it even.

Just For One Day

While I'm a big fan of holidays in mmorpgs, April Fool's isn't one of my favorites. As a smallish child I enjoyed slipping a plastic fried egg onto my grandfather's plate as much as the next over-indulged brat and there were times in my adolescence when I may have convinced one of my more gullible peers that a class had been moved from one room to another when it really hadn't but by the time I got to college I was pretty much done with all that.

I am hugely fond of whimsy, though, and for some reason (probably because no-one likes to get the monthly figures and find a bunch of people cancelled their subs because they didn't see the funny side) when it comes to celebrating the day of fools, developers have tended more towards the twee than the twisted.

I'm also a major supporter of the concept of one-off and time-limited events, something that I know goes down about as well as a whoopee cushion at a wake in some quarters. I don't have a big problem with the fear of missing out so the added thrill of getting something that feels at least a little unique hugely outweighs the possibility I might forget all about it and wind up with nothing. 

For that reason I've always liked it when games make the effort to do something specifically for the day in question when a holiday rolls around. They don't do it all that often, preferring to let things run for a couple of weeks so everyone can fit it all into their schedule, which is fair enough, but it's nice to have an occasional "you had to be there" moment. 

EverQuest II has always kept back a few surprises just for the first of April, known as Bristlebane Day in Norrath. More often than not I do indeed forget all about it until it's too late but this year I happened to know there was a new quest coming and since I was just sitting here...

It's a companion piece to the longstanding Riddled Throughout The Land series that's offered by the sphinx, Imenand. I've done that one a few times. The rewards are all house pets in the form of twenty-sided dice, each of them named after either Gary Gygax or Dave Arneson. They were added to the game as a mark of respect to the creators of Dungeons and Dragons. If memory serves, I think the first of each may have been in memoriam for the D&D developers' deaths, which happened in consecutive years back in the twenty-aughts.

It was a nice gesture but the house pets themselves are kind of annoying so I was pleased to see that the new sphinx, Me-Theiz (Her quest is, of course, Riddle Me-Theiz. It's a pun. I think...) offers a plushie of herself for solving her riddles. Since the quest is new and the wiki hasn't been quite as instantaneous in its updates of late, I wasn't expecting there to be a walkthrough, so I worked the riddles out for myself. It wasn't too hard although the ones in New Halas and Whisperwind Isle took a bit of searching for.

As it happens, it turns out the deatails are on the wiki already but it's always nice to have done it without. And the sphinx looks perfect lounging around my Mara estate. If anyone wants one they'd better hurry. In a few hours, Me-Theiz will be gone, back to wherever it is sphinxes live, until this time next year, when I'm willing to bet she'll have come up with another set of riddles to add to this lot.

Over in Tyria there's something even more whimsical going on. As I've mentioned before, Guild Wars 2 has something of a checkered past where April Fool's events are concerned and for the last few years they've very much focused on the sillier aspects of the festival.

Last year we had the Invasion of the Giant Cats. This year the cats came back (can't believe I didn't use that as the title for the post) but this morning when I logged in to do my dialies I was offered a free Choya Champion. 

I thought it was going to be a mini but it turned out to be a disguise. Click it and you turn into a choya, complete with all the endearing (or annoying, depending on taste) animations and sound effects. 

I particularly enjoy the way whatever weapon you happen to be using doesn't scale to your new size. My elementalist's staff makes it look like she's carrying a jewelled lampost.

I spent quite a while running (or rolling) around as a cactus before I noticed there was also some kind of event associated with the illusion. If you go to Lion's Arch you'll find a Choya Sage who'll give you some highly disappointing rewards if you convince him you've done a whole lot of things you probably haven't.

I did find that funny. Like most Choya he doesn't really talk but he seems interested in whether you've spent most of your time doing Fractals, World vs World or slaying dragons, the last choice presumably suggesting you have an over-riding interest in the story.

At first I took it seriously, telling him I was a hero of the Mists but he seemed easy to convince so I tried him on the other two as well, even though the last time I saw the inside of a Fractal must have been over five years ago. Turns out he's really gullible. He'll believe whatever you tell him.

He doesn't have much to lose in taking your word for it. All he gives you are a few handfuls of vegetables. Something a little more substantial would have been nice. As Mrs Bhagpuss put it, "I wanted a hat or a handbag like Tinky Winky's". Choya do look like angry Teletubbies.

It's a fun little diversion all the same and there was quite a party atmosphere around the center of L.A. where it was all going on. The timescale for this one's not as tight as the sphinxes' riddles. The Choya Sage is going to be hanging out in Lion's Arch for five days.

After that it'll be Super Adventure Box, which itself began as an April Fool's event.

Whoopee, I guess.

Lost Cat

Remember the big cats? They're back.

In fact, if you believe the patch notes, they're multiplying:

New cats, visible while under the effect of the Chatoyant Elixir or similar effects, have been added to each major city.

The patch happened on Tuesday but I didn't get around to reading the notes for a couple of days. By the time I dropped into the forums to see what might have changed there was an additional note:

We have temporarily disabled the additional visual effects of the Chatoyant Lens while we address an issue.

 Lens? What lens? 

Ah, that lens!

I went to Hooligan's Row to get one. All the holiday event vendors are hidden away down there. I'd completely forgotten about them. Why they're tucked away in such an obscure spot beats me. You'd think ANet didn't want people to find them.

The vendor is a cat, naturally. All the cat sells are chatoyant elixirs and the lens. The lens costs ten elixirs. The elixirs cost five tiger's eye pebbles and a beryl orb each. At current prices, as this reddit thread points out, it's much cheaper to buy the ten elixirs on the Trading Post than it is to buy them from the cat.

I didn't need to do either because I had fifteen chatoyant elixirs in my bag from last year. See? I said they'd come in useful.

The lens is a rare quality accessory with appropriately feline stats. The rubric tells you it "causes you to see extra cats while equipped".

I slotted it and went looking.

I couldn't see any new cats. I couldn't see any old cats. I went to a few of the places I remembered the giant cats from last time and there was nothing.

Maybe it was the temporary disablement. Perhaps it disabled all the cats even though that's clearly not what the note said.

I left it for the while and went to do something else. Then this morning when I logged in I thought I'd try again.

Bingo! Big cat sighted in Gendarran Fields!

Only one of the old ones, though. I wanted to see a new one but not so much that I wanted to run around all the big cities searching for them. The patch was a few days old. Someone would have updated the wiki. Someone would have posted a list. With screenshots, most likely.

Yeah, you'd think. But nope. Nothing. Nada. Not a sausage.

No-one cares for cats any more, it seems. I tried all the obvious places - the forums, the wiki, reddit. I asked google. I searched "giant cats" and "big cats" and "new cats" and "gigantic cats". No-one's saying anything about any of them.

Even that reddit post on the lens only went up this morning. The patch was Tuesday. It wouldn't be like this if Dulfy was still around, that's all I'm saying...

So I went and looked for myself. I tried Lion's Arch first. The cat in the water was there. No-one was looking at him. I was the only one there. Last year there was a crowd but I guess giant cats are old news.

I did a lap of L.A. looking up at the sky. I got a crick in my neck but I never saw another giant cat.

Then I tried Divinity's Reach. Found the one in Melandru's Plaza right away. Did another circuit of the city: no joy. Opened a few new waypoints, that was all.

Finally I tried Hoelbrak. It's probably the most compact of the main cities. Last year's cat was there. Couldn't see another.

It wasn't that the Lens wasn't working. Not if you trust the patch notes:

Thank you for your patience while we addressed this issue. The content has been re-enabled.

It might be me, of course. It occured to me the patch note says "new cats". It doesn't say "new giant cats". Last year's event included a load of normal-sized cats that appeared around you now and then. You could touch them and get a temporary buff. Maybe it meant there were new ones of those?

That would be... unexciting. And come to think of it I haven't seen any of those cats either. Not even the old ones.

I'm calling off the search for now. Maybe there are new big cats and maybe there aren't. Maybe that's the April Fools part of it all. I wouldn't put it past ANet. They've done worse.

If someone does post a list before the event ends in a couple of weeks I'll add it here. Then I'll go round and take some pictures. Otherwise, I think I'll let sleeping cats lie.

Kitty, Kitty, Please Come Here

Following on from yesterday's post, here are some more pictures of cats. This is the Internet, right? It's not like there's a quota.

As I added in an edit late in the afternoon, I was wrong about the big cat only appearing in Lion's Arch. There was one in every starting city. It took me a while but I found them all.

First I went to Hoelbrak, simply because that was where the cat was in a screenshot someone posted on the forums. The moment I waypointed in I could see the creature looming over the mountain tops from half a city away.

Finding the exact location in most of the cities turned out to be a case of looking for players hanging in the air on their flapdoodle mounts like a bunch of rubbernecking tourists on hang-gliders. It made for a number of amusing screenshots, where the giant cats looked like they were about to swat the pesky players out of the sky. Sadly, they never did.

Someone on the forums had posted a list of directions on how to find each cat. The format was just like what ArenaNet uses for "quests":

LA = Seek for the Lighthouse.
Hoelbrak = A good view from the mountains.
Rata Sum = Do I see a shiny box?
Divinity Reach = Attack of the Titans Cats.
The Grove = I can see the whole tree here!
Black citadel = The witch cat is present where the blood prince appeared.

The poster later clarified that they'd made them up themselves, which is going above and beyond, I'd say.

Most of them were very obvious and easy to find. The one in Rata Sum was right next to the Super Adventure Box zone-in. It was also the only cat that was on all fours and moving. It seemed to be doing some kind of slow dog-paddle (cat-paddle is not a thing, more's the pity) in mid-air. It was also a total pig to get a decent screnshot of due to the annoying tree on the right.

I had some trouble finding the cat in Sylvari starting area The Grove but that was mostly because the place is a pain to navigate at the best of times, with lifts and spiral stairways and a peculiar looped layout. It turned out to be right next to the zone to Caledon Forest so I could have saved myself a lot of running about if I'd come in that way.

By far the toughest to spot was the cat in Charr stronghold, the Black Citadel. Of course, that was the city I went to first of all yesterday, which is why I originally thought the rumors of cats in the starting city were false.

The Black Citadel cat is way back in the Nolani Ruins, a place no-one goes outside of their Charr personal story or Halloween, when there's an instanced event there. You can't see it from any other part of the city, either, except for one of the viewing gantries.

It was worth the effort. It's a witch's cat in a witch's hat. The same one that rides the broomstick most of my characters use as a glider.

And that was that for cats. Or so I thought, until I logged into EverQuest to set my Overseer quests and saw...

That's the wallpaper from the (in)famous Cat Room as applied to the Character Select screen in honor of Bristlebane's high holy day, April the first. The Cat Room was a place GMs used to use to summon recalcitrant players for a dressing down. According to this thread the cat in the picture belonged to one of the devs and was called Mitty. You could also break into the room from various locations as evidenced in this video:

I did that once but not in Befallen. Somewhere in Kunark, I think it was. And now I'm rambling. Enough with the cats.

Aren't you glad this only happens once a year?

All Hail The King Of The Cats: GW2

Guild Wars 2 has something of a checkered history when it comes to April Fools Day. There was the mega-popular Super Adventure Box in 2013 but then, two years later, there was the fixed wing fiasco that led many people to stop playing for the duration.

Since then, SAB has become an annual holiday in its own right and ArenaNet have become much more circumspect about pissing people off for the sake of a gag. This year they've come up with something that's likely to amuse most, delight some and irritate only a few - ailurophobes.

I was setting my Overseer missions in EverQuest II this morning when Mrs Bhagpuss came in to tell me there was something happening in Tyria. I finished up what I was doing and logged in to find I had mail.

Opening the envelope revealed a communication - of sorts - from His Royal Majesty, First Claw of the Realms and Conqueror of the Sunbeam Throne, the King of All Cats. That's some title for a cat that can't even speak English.

The directions sent me to Lion's Arch, appropriately, where a lot of people were running around in a frenzy, talking across each other in map chat and generally behaving like something big was happening.

Which it really wasn't. Mrs Bhagpuss popped up a party invite and I went to join her. She was treading water at the edge of the L.A. harbor, staring up at the biggest cat ever seen in Tyria.

We looked at it for a while. I took some screenshots. Various people wondered in map chat what the cat might want or what we might do to get its attention. I swam down to find that the King of of All Cats wears a collar and name tag, which suggests he might have an owner even more extraordinarly oversized than himself. And that he might not be quite as all-powerful as his title implies.

I went to check the forums to see if anyone had any information about what to do next. No-one did. For about the thousandth time I wished Dulfy was still in the game guide business.

Back in L.A. the general feeling seemed to be that the event was purely for the fun of seeing a very big cat. Which is plenty of fun for a lot of people, myself included.

Also, when you drink the tonic that comes with the mail, something I should have mentioned you need to do before you can see the King of the Cats at all, you also find intangible cats of regular size appearing all around you, wherever you go.

The tonics last an hour and you get nine of them, which is likely to be eight more than most people are going to need, although there are those for whom infinity tonics wouldn't be enough. According to the description they only work on April Fools Day so if you want to get your kitty fix on there's no time to waste.

Word was the King of the Cats could be seen from Gendarran Fields so I went to take a look. It took a little longer than expected because the character I was playing, my foremost Elementalist and primary World vs World character, has apparently never set foot in that map before today.

Once I'd worked out how to zone into Gendarran Fields from Lion's Arch, under somewhat unecessary instruction from Mrs Bhagpuss, there he was, a giant cat looming over the city wall. Most... impressive. Not to say disturbing.

I took a trip to a couple of other starter cities on a rumor that the big cat was visible in all of them but if he was, I couldn't find him. I settled for a few more selfies and that was pretty much that. [Edit - the rumor is true, as confirmed in this forum thread].

As April Fool events go it's quite low key but also well-judged. It's funny, surprising and doesn't ruin your day, which is more than I can say for 99% of practical jokes.

If it turns out there's anything more to it I'll come back with an update but for now, all hail our new overlord, the King of the Cats!

Do Rabbits Lay Eggs? : EverQuest

Yesterday saw the uncomfortable elision of  a couple of notable dates on the calendar - Easter Sunday and April Fools Day. It's hard to think of of two "holidays" that share less common ground; one the most grave and serious date in the Christian calendar, the other the epitome of idiocy.

I suspected the outcome for MMOs would be the least silly silly day on record and so it proved. Wilhelm, who keeps an annual tally of Blizzard's efforts, could barely find anything to post about. Reading the comments, I found it instructive that Blizzard took a lot more trouble coming up with gags and pranks for their Korean fanbase than they were willing to expend on their largely Christian North American and European markets.

GW2, which has in the past made a Big Deal of All Fool's Day, not always to everyone's amusement, ignored it completely this year. We did get the return of Super Adventure Box but that's now a  month-long event that's long outgrown its origins as an April Fool's surprise.

A shining eggsample.

Easter, of course, also has a strong, non-religious presence in the West. The moveable feast co-incides - approximately - with the coming of Spring. I guess that's where all those rabbits and eggs come in.

Telwyn reminded me that EQ2, unofficial cheerleader for the concept of MMO Holidays, added an egg-themed event last year. The awkwardly-named Beast'r is running again right now with some new content and I was planning to pop in to grab some fresh eggs for my houses but somehow I ended up in EverQuest instead.

EverQuest's main condescension to All Fool's Day seemed to be the forcible conversion of the in-game text font to the supposedly hysterical Comic Sans. I thought I'd accidentally changed something in my settings and it was only when someone mentioned it in General Chat that I realised it was supposed to be a joke.

I have no idea who these guys are but, to quote Velma Dinkley, "I smell a mystery".

Something that turned out to be far more exciting, entertaining and enjoyable was my serendipitous discovery of a brightly colored painted egg, lying on the ground in Plane of Knowledge. In the original version of Norrath you could drop anything you carried on the ground and it would lie there, waiting to be picked up. That changed long ago but there are still "ground spawns", items that appear as obsevable, interactable "physical" presences in the world.

Naturally, if I ever see one of these ground spawns, I grab it. I snatched up the egg and examined it. It was a quest item. I looked at it and puzzled for a moment. Then I stuffed it in my packs and forgot about it. If you play EQ for five minutes you'll likely find five quest items you don't have quests for. I tend to hang on to them until I need space, then sell or destroy them.

My plan was to hunt Aviaks in South Karana. I took the Stone to Arena, zoned into Lake Rathetear and started swimming. I killed a Gnoll Embalmer on my way through the gnoll camp. That got me the Skull of Jhen'Tra, a magic item people camped for back in the distant past, and an Achievement. EQ has a full Achievement system these days, which is yet another thing I have to read up.

EQ's treant is a rare case of the updated model strongly improving on the original. These guys are huge and scary.

I was happily killing Rooks and Harriers beneath the Birdhouse in SK when I noticed something shining in the darkness. I picked it up. It was another egg, painted with a different design. I carried on hunting.

I pulled a Rook just as a roaming Avocet appeared out of the gloom. Red to me. It added. I feared the Avo but couldn't land darkness to snare it. It took off like a rocket. As I was chasing it through the black, rainy Karana night, my pet beating on the Rook as I tried to get the Avo snared, I spotted yet another egg, glowing under a tree.

When the Avo and the Rook were finally dead and I was out of mana, I rode my worg back to the spot where I remembered seeing the egg. It was there. I picked it up. It was painted in yet another, different design

Now I was excited. I began to think I might be able to find them all. I wondered whether the ones I'd already found would count. Did I need the quest in my journal before I picked them up for it to update? It would be so annoying to have them all and then get the quest and have to go find them all a second time!

Centaurs don't have indoor lighting, apparently.

I quickly googled "EverQuest Crosshatched Painted Egg". The top result took me to Allakhazam, still an excellent EQ resource, where I found full details of a quest called The Origin of the Cuniculus. Reading it up I found that not only was it a quest I could do it was a quest I very much wanted to do. I mean, who doesn't want a wand that turns you into a rabbit? ("Cuniculus", by the way, is "a small conduit or burrow, as an underground drain or rabbit hole". Don't let anyone ever tell you gaming isn't educational).

When I finished my level I gated back to PoK. It was getting late but Allakhazam had the quest flagged as "Seasonal" and I was worried about what that might mean. Usually holiday quests hang around for a week at least but Bristlebane Day, as April 1st is known in Norrath, has always featured quests that last no longer than the day itself.

I found Grundle Cogwelder and ran through his dialog to get the quest in my journal. The quest instantly updated to acknowledge the three eggs I'd already found.

Obvious question: who or what is Stomples?

EQ is so much more accomodating than it once was. Not only does it retro-fit quest drops, it even has an excellent on-screen quest tracker, just like a modern MMO. With that up in game and the Allakhazam walkthrough to guide me, I set off to Qeynos.

It took about an hour to find the rest of the eggs. Some were in Qeynos Hills around Blackburrow and Surefall Glade. There were plenty at the Barbarian Village in West Karana, where I had to Gather Shadows to conceal myself from red-con necrocidal barbarians. I also killed a roaming treant and a Wandering Spirit that I remembered hunting for some long -forgotten quest a decade ago.

It took the best part of twenty minutes to ride my Worg through West and North Karana. I found the last egg I needed - Sunburst Painted - at the Centaur Village in South Karana. I memmed Gate and ported back to Plane of Knowledge for the turn-in.

Tiny rabbits. Hard to see - even harder to catch.

Grundle, clearly beginning to lose his grasp on reality, handed me a wand called Madness of Stomples. It fits in the ammo slot, where I previously had a Bookworm that gives +2 to fishing. Now I have a wand that randomly either turns me into a rabbit or summons a horde of tiny rabbits that scurry madly in all directions. I call that one heck of an upgrade.

That quest has been in EverQuest for seven years but it's the first I knew of it. Probably because it's the first time I've played EQ on Bristlebane Day. It was one of those lucky happenstances that exemplify what's so wonderful about this hobby.

A real "you had to be there" moment, all the better for coming entirely unanticipated.