Bornakk posted a poll on the forums the other day asking what everyone's favorite April Fool's joke from Blizzard was, and surprisingly (to me, anyway -- I thought Tauren Marines would win for sure), the Molten Core Atari game is winning. There's no question that the bears joke was great (it does make sense), but I thought the game looked a little boring. Blizzard fans disagree, however -- people like the pixelated versions of the old MC bosses.

Which brings us to the question of whether Blizzard could actually do this. Boffo says he'd shell out $10 to play this game, while other people say they'd spend as much as $30 to actually see it on retail shelves (or, more likely, as a download). The game looks like a version of Asteroids more than anything, and the trailer (on purpose, probably) don't really make it clear what the rules are. But it looks simple enough to put together -- maybe a weekend's work by a dedicated coder with some MC runs under his or her belt.

Instead of a release, though, it'd be more fun to see this implemented as a minigame somewhere. We already know that Blizzard is planning to do some mobile work, so maybe they could release this as a fun distraction for the iPhone while planning something bigger. Incorporating it into the main WoW game somewhere would be a fun possibility as well. I can't think of any other time when a Blizzard 4/1 joke actually made it into real life (Two-headed ogres aren't actually playable yet), but they might as well start here, right?

On April Fools' Day, amongst our extensive HKO coverage, Daniel Whitcomb reported that the combat log changes introduced in Patch 2.4 were being rolled back in Patch 2.5. Slouken has since indicated that he was "just kidding", as Daniel had guessed.

So the combat log will not be rolled back and there may not be a Patch 2.5 before Wrath of the Lich King.

He did say, however, that the UI changes that were to happen in the fictional 2.5 will in fact happen in WotLK. Specifically, the arguments "this" and "argN" will be phased out of the Blizzard UI in favor of "self" and other local arguments. Slouken recommends that authors start using "self" in the meantime, so that they will be prepared for when the expansion comes out.

It's now safe to go back to the forums -- the "lolcats," "lolwut"s, "lolz," and all of the other nonsense Blizzard put in players' posts have been deleted, finally. Blizzard hasn't given any hint why it took so long -- of course there's the chance that they just let the joke go on long enough (and trust me, you shouldn't be too angry at anyone who pushes an April Fool's Day joke longer than you think it should go), but it seems a little more likely that the folks in charge of the joke stumbled a little bit -- for a while there, it seemed like we might have "lolz" forever.

But no, things are back to normal, and all of the "lol wut"s that you see on the forums are players' own fault.

Nehthaera today wanted to let a lot of the naysayers out there know a thing or two about their April Fool's jokes and the issues with the servers. She tells us the obvious, more or less: the people who do the April Fool's work are completely separate from the people that do the server and development work.

So these elaborate and well done jokes have exactly zero impact on the servers. They don't have anything to do with maintenance, with patch 2.4, or with Wrath of the Lich King (well, unless you actually believe there'll be a bard class). This means they could have done nothing for April Fool's, and things still would have been as difficult as they were yesterday.

I want to give Nethaera two thumbs up for her post. I really enjoy it lately when GMs and CMs lay the smack down about issues like this, especially to whiney forum posters.

After reading an announcement on the evening of March 31st, 2008 declaring that Nihilum, whom we recently interviewed, would be quitting the World of Warcraft forever, WoW Insider received quite a lot of mail surrounding the issue. Was it true, or simply another April Fools joke?

They even began disbanding their guild and joining others, and spoke of a plan to reappear together, perhaps in other games. There was an outpouring of love and concern from the community at large, and unlike the reaction to other jokes on April 1st, everyone was at least weary (ahem) wary that this one was not a joke.

Nihilum cited several reasons for their departure, including dissatisfaction with Blizzard's designs and methods, and an overall trend towards casual play while depleting much of the rewards, incentive and challenge for hardcore guilds, including changes made in patch 2.4.

At 12:01 a.m. on April 2nd, 2008, Nihilum confirmed that they were indeed yanking our chains, and even made a cheerful April Fools video. To quote, "Sorry for the scare everyone!" with a keen happy face at the end. We love you Nihilum!

Apparently HKO Insider hasn't worked out as well as we originally thought it would. After a day full of covering Hello Kitty Online, readers have sent us an overwhelming message: they love WoW Insider, and World of Warcraft is the game we all want to see covered.

So you get your wish: starting right now, WoW Insider has returned, and HKO Insider is no more. And none too soon -- our writers, especially Rossi, who would rather wrestle a tiger than write about the Flower Kingdom, were planning a revolt if we didn't change the site format back. And our poll this afternoon pretty conclusively showed what you all felt about the changeover.

So we're changing things back. From now on, we'll stay WoW Insider, and be your number one source for news and views about World of Warcraft and the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King expansion. From classes to professions to strategy and community news, we'll only cover World of Warcraft all day every day, from level 1 to 80 and beyond.

Unless, that is, they create a Spongebob MMO anytime soon...

While we're still HKO Insider, we do have some nostalgia left for our former game, and since we saw this thing that more or less looks like some legitimate WoW news, maybe, we figured we might as well post it for old time's sake. (Ed: No more of this! HKO news only!)

While it's true that the 2.4 combat log has had a few glitches, it seemed like at least a good portion of them were fixed in today's patch, and we could expect the log to be used at it's full potential soon enough. However, apparently... No dice. Blizzard poster Slouken announced today that patch 2.5 would feature a complete rollback of the 2.4 combat log changes. Hope all you programming-type dudes kept old copies of your 2.3 addon code.

Then again, you might want to look at the date and hold off for another 24 hours before you start panicking and rewriting stuff. But then again, Slouken's keeping a pretty straight face about this! Then again once more, that's a lot of work on the part of the dev team to just abandon and roll back, and the thread itself isn't even stickied. So who knows?

Anyhow, stay tuned, we'll let you know if this pans out, or if Slouken just has a damn good poker face. If it is true, this also means that we're looking at a patch 2.5 before the expansion -- while it may not be a big content patch, there will be one more game update before Wrath.

New Arena maps have been announced for Hello Kitty Online Island Adventure's Arena system, which was created to cater particularly to the cutesy-anime-loving PvP players. In a statement released to the public, Sanrio corporation said that it was "taking its lead from a more popular MMORPG which has started to design its game around Arenas." Sanrio notes that the increasing popularity of Arenas indicate that this is the direction that MMOs will be taking for the future, and they believe that building an Arena system for Hello Kitty Online will make the game future-proof.

However, Sanrio is quick to note that their Arena system is superior by sheer virtue of the options available in each map, which requires more strategy than the other MMORPG. The first two maps revealed are called the Happy Fun Café and Strawberry Smile Garden maps, each having its unique features and strategic advantages. The Happy Fun Cafe map features a bar/counter at the center of the map which can be used to abuse line-of-sight spells and abilities. Players may also interact with the pastry and refreshments on the counter in order to use them as weapons or consumables. Sanrio believes that this kind of innovative map system will push the envelope of Arena play.

Learn more about the second map, Strawberry Smile Garden, after the jump.

I did not think anything could break me away from the Death Knight class. The minute I got my hands on the Wrath of the Lich King beta, I was going to go to the character selection screen, pick Death Knight, and never look back. Sorry Druid, Sorry Hunter. Sorry Warlock. Maybe I'll come back to you when my uber awesome Death Knight is level 80 and I have Frostmourne in my hot little hands.

Blizzard has once again raised the bar. No longer shall I be a Death Knight. Instead, I shall be a Bard. That's right, Blizzard's just announced a new Hero Class, and it's not the Archdruid that was previously rumored.

Yes, it's only midnight, and already the wackiness has started. These people just couldn't wait to do something a little silly on the first day of April.

• Reader Tim let us know that Baron Soosdon has quit his job at Machinima.com and stopped making machinima in general. He's said goodbye with (what else?) a Linkin Park video.
• WoWWiki has apparently switched places with the Guild Wars wiki, and vice versa. Make sure to check out their news section, where they mix up Guild Wars news with WoW news. Have you heard about the CM leaving, or the upcoming sequel?
• Wowhead's site, as you can see above, looks strangely familiar (thanks to everyone who sent this in).

More to come for sure. Don't believe anything you read today (unless you read it here on WoW Insider, of course).

The prank was criticized for supporting the belief that World or Warcraft players are lazy and obsessed. I can understand the complaint, but I admit to tabbing out while waiting for arena queues to order pizza online at least once or twice.