Behind the Scenes: April Fools

For the past six years, it's been a tradition of mine to take part in April Fools by posting a fake secret to my Twitter and reddit, only to watch people desperately attempt to find it. Naturally, I like to use places that don't exist or cannot be accessed, resulting in further chaos.

Every year, a lot of people are very angry with me. At the same time, a lot of people also ask how it's done. So, in this post, I'm going to break down how I create these fake secrets and show some of the tricks involved in the process.

First, let's go over the secrets!

2021 - Bengal Tiger on Fool's Atoll (Twitter / reddit)
Tucked away on an inaccessible island north of Townlong Steppes, April appears to have found the mythical Bengal Tiger mount.

2020 - Fluorescent Green Mechanostrider (Twitter / reddit)
Over in Spires of Arak, April has located the legendary Fluorescent Green Mechanostrider in Admiral Taylor's non-existent garrison mine.

2019 - Jesse's Lost Hat outside UBRS (Twitter / reddit)
Resting atop a slumped skeleton on an inaccessible ledge outside of Upper Blackrock Spire, April has found a cowboy themed hat once belonging to Jesse.

2018 - Lord Crowley's Old Spectacles (Twitter / reddit)
In the family orchard, April has found Lord Crowley's Old Spectacles, a cosmetic item intended for Cataclysm that never made it into the live game.

2017 - Black Piglet in Dalaran (Twitter / reddit)
Allegedly hidden behind a sewer grate in Dalaran, April has uncovered another unreleased companion pet. To unlock the gate, players were instructed to throw bombs at the gate.

Some amazing timing actually lead to me finding two real secrets earlier this very day, resulting in widespread confusion. Sorry Wowhead.

2016 - Orange Murloc Egg in Booty Bay (Twitter / reddit)
Nestled in the inaccessible cove in the entryway to Booty Bay, April has located another murloc companion pet. This was shortly after a murloc pet had recently been uncovered.

The Big Idea

First on the agenda each year is to decide on what the "secret" is going to be. Simply faking a secret that doesn't exist is one thing, but I like to take it one step further and use places that you can't get to, making it harder for people to instantly disprove.

In order to do that though, we have to actually get to the place. There's no special editing on that front, we sometimes spend hours trying to glitch into places with every trick in the book.

We could just create a location from scratch that doesn't exist and leave people trying to figure it out, but having a location that players can see but can't quite get to feels like the perfect balance.

In some scenarios, such as with the 2020 secret hidden in the mineshaft of Admiral Taylor's Garrison, some improvisation is needed. While the entryway to the location exists, upon breaking in we find that it's not real.

With the 2018 secret of Lord Crowley's Old Spectacles, a few people picked up on a Void Elf being at Crowley's Orchard, a location only accessible to worgen players.

People logically assumed that model edits or 3D fakery was involved. In reality, we actually found an obscure way to switch phases to get in to starter zone on a non-worgen.

This was done on purpose to add an extra level of confusion, the hope was people seeing the Void Elf wouldn't realize it was a worgen only location and try to find it.

Setting the Stage

Getting to the location is the first step, but now we need to make everything on the UI look believable too. Let's start with the thing most people pick up - the character name!

I don't actually have a character named April (it was taken), but it's been part of the tradition since the beginning. This is altered with a quick Lua command in the chat.

The next thing on the list to adjust is the time and date. Since these are normally prepared a week or more in advance, I make a point to set the calendar to April 1st.

Since the text element that contains the date isn't named, we can't reference it directly like we did with PlayerName. Instead, we use the built-in framestack tool (accessed with /framestack) to locate it, and then reference it as fsobj.

In addition to adjusting the date, I also set the time to be a minute past midnight, which is when I release the post (by my own timezone, at least).

Simply overwriting the clock text wouldn't work, since it gets updated constantly. To bypass this, I instead overwrite the function that provides the time. This only lasts until the UI is reloaded, so no harm done.

Another detail that I sometimes change is the minimap location. For example, with the 2021 secret, I adjusted the location to Fool's Atoll. This is done by adjusting the text of the MinimapZoneText element.

As a little easter egg for the 2021 secret, I replaced the objectives of a quest I had active. Only a few people seemed to pick up on this little addition.

Now that the elements of the interface already visible are adjusted, it's time to add some new ones. For a lot of the secrets, I show the character looting/learning a mount or pet.

To fake this, I print two messages to the chat log using the same text that would normally appear. Escape sequences are used to both colour the text correctly, as well as embed an item hyperlink.

To add to the illusion, I also include a mount journal entry in the posts. For this, I once again turn to a lot of in-game commands. With the mount journal open, I modify the icons, descriptions, text, models and more.

Another addition to the list is a loot frame. Often times I will show myself "looting" the item in question from a chest or lockbox. To fake this, I first find the nearest mob I can which drops loot and kill it.

Instead of taking the items, I leave one and then run a couple more scripts to convert the dropped item into the secret item in question.

Unlike the prior edits, a little bit of Photoshop was used (since it was quicker). With the above faked loot frame, I then super-imposed it over the top of fake "looting" screenshot, which in reality we just did /kneel.

To ensure the edges/quality were perfect, I actually exported the necessary interface files from wow.export and then reconstructed it in Photoshop using the in-game fake as a foundation.

In the 2020 secret, the character was shown leading down into a mine that didn't exist. In reality, we just used the garrison mine, but to help sell it, I included the splash text that comes with entering a zone; simulating that is a little messier.

The Final Touches

As you may have noticed, everything I've covered so far as been interface related. So how do I actually put the fake mounts and pets in? That's actually quite easy.

Okay, that obviously never happened. For the actual mounts themselves, that's where some 3D shenanigans come into play. After applying all of the interface edits above, I take a screenshot without my character.

How did I remove my character? Easier than you might think. A simple /console showplayer 0 and you're gone! Moving into Blender, I rig the necessary characters and their mounts together.

With a lot of careful positioning and tweaking, the characters are imposed into the scene using the same perspective they would have if they were actually there.

To make absolutely sure that the mounts look right, I actually take a reference image from in-game using a similar model mount - in this case the Winterspring Frostsaber. This allows me to be sure it looks exactly as it would in-game.

Once everything is done and all put together, the end results are generally quite convincing.

Conclusion

I hoped you enjoyed this little behind the scenes of how I create these "secrets". For those of you who hate April Fools, I'm sorry - but at least you only have to endure my shenanigans once per year.

Same time next year? 👀