#0 - April 4, 2007, 12:14 a.m.
1. Make sure the patch you're writing fake notes for is actually the next patch. Don't write Patch 2.0.7 notes when the current patch is 2.0.12.
2. At least try to glance at the Under Development page, so that you can convincingly lie about the things Blizzard convincingly lies about on their website.
3. Make sure that your spelling and grammar are corrected to standard American English. Most word processing programs contain spelling and grammar checkers. Use them.
3a. Corollary: When cutting and pasting from other (fake or authentic) patch notes, insure that you don't accidentally include double line breaks or double punctuations.
3b. Note to our European counterparts: That's "American English", like U.S. college professors use, not "'murkin English", like the U.S. President uses.
4. Try to mimic the formatting and section breaks of existing patch notes. If your class headers include changes to e.g. the Greatsword of Horrid Dreams, people will be quite suspicious.
CLASSES
1. Always include at least one changed Mage spell icon. No patch is complete without changes to a Mage spell icon.
2. Unless writing fake notes for a major expansion patch (e.g. 2.0), never buff hybrids non-healing abilities. Hybrids are only buffed during expansion patches, to lure back customers who don't like playing second-class citizens.
2a. Corollary: "Expansion" buffs to hybrids should sound flashy, but turn out to be useless (e.g. Avenger's Shield, Totem of Wrath). Exceptions can be made for buffs to healing talents.
3. Always address at least three class complaints voiced by chronic forum whiners -- preferably Warriors and Rogues. For a general idea of which crybabies to listen to, look at the Everquest characters of those developers with no prior game design experience. Those should align with your chosen classes almost perfectly.
4. Always include at least two absurd class changes based on the one-in-a-million events recorded in one person's Youtube movie. Movies don't need to be current or accurate.
4a. Corollary: It's risky to include fake changes based on Photoshopped critical hits, but you can do this if there are many of them, particularly featuring a "hybrid" class.
PROFESSIONS AND ITEMS
1. Always add unrequested recipes that increase the dependence of endgame content on farming. When in doubt, add recipes for Alchemy, Enchanting,and Jewelcrafting, in that order. By default, mention resistance items with absurdly hard crafting requirements.
2. Never improve Engineering. Instead, claim to make "improvements" to "several" recipes, when "several" means "3" and "improvements" mean "adding a level cap, above which they are ineffective".
3. Never make changes that would alleviate the monotony and tedium of leveling professions from 1 to 350, particularly Blacksmithing or Enchanting. Tedium is "fun", remember?
4. Never mention adding non-healing "hybid" class gear to endgame content. The presence of such a claim would immediately discredit any leaked patch notes.
5. Always claim to be making "improvements" to items, even if the descriptions of your improvements are clearly pure nerfs. As a real example, the Paladin Tier 4 "tank" set was recently "improved" by reducing Defense and adding Mana/5.
6. Always mention that "several exciting new items and recipes" have been added to the game, but never give out specifics. This is because there are no specifics. In reality, the recipes don't exist, and the items will have the graphics of level 30 Mail armor.
CONTENT AND BUGFIXES
1. Your fake bugfixes should preferentially affect the 0.1% of WoW players who make no contribution to society, live in mom's basement at age 37, and have most level 70 raids on "farm" status.
1a. Corollary: Never include more bugfixes for normal players than for hardcore raiders. Your fake patch notes should strive for equal amounts of bugfixes that affect (a) the 0.1% of players who raid all week long, and (b) the 99.9% of the rest of us.
2. Unless your fake notes cover a major expansion patch, never include meaningful, interesting content for casual players. Include only content that gives them "something to do", such as farming reputations ad nauseum. If unsure what the phrase "something to do" entails, ask any American public school teacher.
