April Fools at Blizzard 2019 is Pretty Much No Fools

There have been points in the past where April Fools was a pretty big deal at Blizzard and each game would have a special joke, a silly new game or outrageous feature, on their respective sites.

Blizzard Outcasts from 2014

Things are no longer that funny around Blizzard these days I gather.

There are a variety of reasons likely for that, but they all add up to declining fortunes.  World of Warcraft, still huge, isn’t as huge as it once was.  Overwatch has seen a decline over the last year and reports are that Hearthstone is suffering from franchise fatigue.

As such, this year’s entries are pretty much non-existent, somehow managing to be a step down from even last year’s low turn out.  I have logged below what I found on the US sites, which I will update if new items show up.

Blizzard Overall

There is a translator up that will show you Blizzard sites in the Murloc language.

The Murloc language is, of course, Nerglish.  This was also part of the Hearthstone April Fools last year.

World of Warcraft

The annual April 1st patch notes are up, titled Patch 8.6.7 Build 5309, a nod to a bit of 80s pop culture.  Some traditions never die.  Still, it is a somewhat tepid listing this year, featuring entries such as:

  • Feral Druids can now be crowd-controlled by throwing a slice of cheese on their head.
  • Groups of 5 Feral Druids can come together to form one super-bot.
  • Due to noise complaints, Stonebark has been fitted with a shock collar.

But that is it.  The WoW site has no new entries for April 1.

Overwatch

Nothing

Hearthstone

Nothing

StarCraft

Nothing

Diablo III

Nothing

Diablo: Immortal

Already confirmed as not an April Fools joke at BlizzCon.

Heroes of the Storm

It is still there… but no April Fools joke.

Past Years

If this year’s lack of effort leaves you longing for bigger or better gags, you can always look back at past years:

I think it might be telling that the official Blizzard April Fool’s archive stops at 2015.

We may be at a point where we can declare April Fools no longer really a thing for Blizzard.

But if you’re dying for something on April Fools, I guess you can go play Minecraft 3D.  The over-the-top April Fools spirit has hit Mojang… though I am not sure that their impression of a 1994 version of Minecraft is all that different from what they have today.

8 thoughts on “April Fools at Blizzard 2019 is Pretty Much No Fools”

  3. Azuriel

    I definitely agree with the decline… but it does make sense to avoid Hearthstone jokes, considering they are in the middle of actively revealing cards for the next expansion. Easy to create outage and/or disbelief with something silly or clearly OP.

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  4. Archey

    “Liquid Magma Totem has been renamed Magma Totem, because what other kind of magma would it be?”

    This sounds pretty reasonable as a real change, to be honest…

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  6. bhagpuss

    @Isey I’d be willing to bet that, in the past, almost all of the stuff that didn’t involve actual coding would have been done in people’s own time. That’s how these things go when people are invested in their jobs. When they’re just taking the paycheck, not so much.

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  8. Anonymous

    I think they’re in a rough enough spot PR-wise where they couldn’t have pulled off much without people freaking. Even the little bit they did for WoW sparked some comments I saw along the lines of “If they have time to write pointless jokes, why weren’t they fired with everyone else?”

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