April Fools' Joke

Balls being annoying!

Official April Fools' Jokes are occasionally made by Hattrick Team on April 1st, the All Fools' Day celebrated in many countries and marked by the commission of hoaxes and other practical jokes of varying sophistication on friends, family members, rivals, and neighborhood, or sending them on a fool's errand, the aim of which is to embarrass the gullible.

These occasions usually don't go unnoticed on forum!

Global jokes

This is a list of all known official events that have appeared so far:

2006

Bob Sunesson officially retires from football. His retirement message goes like this: Bob was last seen surrounded by beautiful photo models with a cocktail drink in his hand. His legendary days in Hattrick will always be remembered.

2009

Balls, the first official joke was made with the introduction of the Hattrick's own (very annoying) MS Paperclip bot.

2010

Fool, a new player specialty was introduced:

Celebrating April Fools' Day To celebrate this day, Hattrick is releasing another player speciality: Fool. The benefit of such a player is that he will boost your team spirit - but only when this player plays at least 45 minutes in any competitive match. However, if he's not playing competively during the week, it might harm your team spirit.

The joke wasn't over yet because anyone looking on the transfer market for a player with Fool specialty would be redirected to his/her own manager page.

2011

A new pitch settings was introduced:

Pitch settings Today we launch a new game feature: Pitch settings. With this feature you decide what your pitch looks like, which cut pattern you want, grass length and so on. More importantly, each setting will also influence your home matches in a certain way; for example boosting certain players or team parts. So choose wisely! You can change settings whenever you want, but the settings selected when the training update starts are the ones that will be used for the coming week. Your pitch settings will be in effect for matches from round 3 in the series (next week). You can see how other managers have set up their pitch on their arena page.

The pitch setting was removed on April 2nd, then re-added a few weeks later as an esthetic pointless feature.

2012

The 3D match viewer was introduced, but was just a composition of match text in 3d shape:

3D match viewer We've got a lot of requests about this during the years, and now it's finally here: a 3D match viewer! Best change ever!

2013

Referee was not a joke, but the all thing was organised to resemble a joke. Only a few days after referees were introduced everyone began to believe that it was not a plot.

April fools bribery Yesterday's news about introducing referees was not a April Fools joke. Being able to offer them a bribe to influence them to make key decisions in your favour naturally was, and the game play regarding referee bribery was also a joke. We hope you enjoyed it! The referees will stay and continue to be part of the game, and will be chosen just as mentioned in yesterday's My Hattrick announcement. Please note that a referee's personality (honesty and so on) does not impact his decisions on the pitch or the match in any way, referees are just visual extras for matches.

2014

Stamina reform - If a manager go to the gym or take a long walk, stamina points will be built up that will benefit the fitness of your team as well.

New Stamina System Starting next season, we will launch a new stamina system that will be truly unique in online gaming. Rather than relying merely on in-game factors, we will extend the scope of stamina in Hattrick to depend also on the actual physical activities of the manager. This will be achieved through a new wearable computing API, compatible with all standard fitness trackers. ...Read more

2015

"Chef", new member in staff... By the way, on the menu for today is fish. "It's a seasonal dish. We call it Poisson d'Avril", says Bob Sunesson.

What's cooking? Next season, we will introduce a new staff type: The Chef. Obviously, keeping a good diet is instrumental for any sports team, and it is about time we bring this aspect to Hattrick as well. When you hire a chef you will not only have a chance to improve player's stamina and training speed, you might also risk culinary disasters. Should you play it safe with another bolognese or go for that splendidly nutritious raw tuna just before a crucial Cup game? There has never been a better time to go with your gut feeling when making strategic decisions in Hattrick. The Chef will debut at the start of next Season.

2016

New live viewer.

An interesting idea, but... No. The new live viewer as shown yesterday will not let managers bring on cheerleaders, shout at referees or spend time watering the pitch - that was of course a prank on our part. The stadium view presented will be there, however the stadium will instead be filled with information which matters to the game. Aside from the graphical overview of the pitch, we are putting a lot of effort into making the text more alive and exciting. Consider the stadium a very small first taste of what is still to come and stay tuned in for a more complete preview in a few weeks' time.

Local jokes

A number of times previously, local officials had made jokes. This is a list of all known local Aprils Fools' Jokes known:

Pacific Islands (Oceania, 2008)

A Hattrick announcement went out to all Oceanian users, stating the following:

Introducing Pacific Islands! From next season, Oceania will be renamed to Pacific Islands and we will be introducing Australia and New Zealand as new countries. If you live in either Australia or New Zealand it will be mandatory to start a new team in your respective country. There will be a one season grace period, but come end of next season any users remaining in Pacific Islands who live in Australia or New Zealand will have their teams locked and have to wait 7 weeks before they can re-apply in their correct country.

Most people seemed to have realized this joke for what it was because of two facts; the sheer stupidity of it, and the fact that the announcement was made to Oceania users only.

MOD-dnbrt (Belgium, 2008)

It was announcend that dnbrt became Moderator. Dnbrt is knows as a notorious spammer so many people were supprised to see him become moderator. In coorperation with MOD-Ambi1 he even "closed" a topic (11042014.1) to make more people believe this "joke".

NT Election (Danmark)

The Danish GM's announced that the NT Elections were being discontinued, and that a former, somewhat unpopular, NT Captain would be reinstated.

Swedish Match Reports (Sweden, 2009)

Since April fools' day coincided with friendly matches this time around, a Swedish LA had some fun on the users behalf and changed some of the introductory match report lines.

An example:

Overcast weather free of rain made for a crowd turnout of 801 at Wombat Stadium today. WIK had chosen a strategic 3-5-2 formation. Starters: Andersson - Möllerstedt, Paunović, Axelsen - Stickling, Zchut, Nyírfalusi, Özpetek, Stamenov - Verbruggen, Ek. ...

was changed to:

Overcast weather free of rain made for a crowd turnout of 801 at Wombat Stadium today. An unexpected solar eclipse made the field bathe in darkness, since it was void of electrical lights. The referee had no choice but to cancel the game, since the players couldn't even see the tip of their noses in the pitch black darkness. However, we can reveal how the teams had intended to play. WIK had chosen a strategic 3-5-2 formation. Starters: Andersson - Möllerstedt, Paunović, Axelsen - Stickling, Zchut, Nyírfalusi, Özpetek, Stamenov - Verbruggen, Ek. ... (Translated from Swedish)

Crowd number "fix" (Netherlands & Belgium)

The LAs had some fun changing the Dutch sentences stating the number of spectators to a fixed, very low, number. Due to this, every user who had his language set to Dutch had very little spectators. Luckily the money they received was correct. A result of this stunt was an overflow of conference topics from people wondering what had happened. An example was:

No rain had been predicted, and nevertheless only a crowd of 5 had shown up at <<arena-name>> for the match. (Translated from Dutch)

External Links

• Wikipedia page on April Fools' Day