It’s a hot night.

The mind races.

You think about your knife.

The only friend who hasn’t betrayed you.

The only friend who won’t be burned by your carefully laid trap.

Sleep tight, mates, for on the morrow, all Hell breaks loose.

If you haven’t yet discovered the fun to be had by playing pranks on your e-friends and guildmates, you’ve been missing out. First, a warning: pranks aren’t any fun if your target bursts into tears, quits the game, and finishes out his (her) life a mere shell of his (her) former self.

Ok, with some asshats that part would be fun.

Let’s just say this: consider your target. Some have a good sense of humor and will spend the rest of their gaming career seeking revenge; others will mope and whine and only fantasize about revenge. Also, consider the spirit in which the prank is given. Mean-spirited, malicious pranks should be saved for your arch enemies.

Warnings aside, here’s a short list of classic pranks — old skoolers might recognize these, noobs will not (*nudge nudge*):

1. The Phony Guild Application — (e.g. you apply to another guild for membership using your target’s identity) Obviously, this can be used for evil as well as harmless fun. I’m not saying that I have used this for evil. Maybe I have. All I’m saying is there’s no proof. That’s my way of explaining, if you’re going to use your powers for evil, watch your IPs and use the wireless at Starbucks or the library.

Here’s how it works, harmless fun scenario: You go to EvilGuild08’s website, fill out an app under your e-friend’s name — make him look good on the app, (you want him to get a response) — then you wait. Eventually, he’ll say wtf in guildchat and announce that EvilGuild08’s recruitment officer sent him a tell about his guild app or some such. Your response: Really? That’s … odd. Let him vent a little, then confess.

Evil scenario: Same deal, but this time make your target (i.e. the Arch Enemy) look fabulously qualified for a guild position (elsewhere, away from you), then wait. If you’re lucky, he’ll silently join EvilGuild08 and you can celebrate. Mission accomplished. If he wtfs, you say, “really?”, then you’re a phantom. Next week, try out EvilGuild09.

2. Chat Channel Chicanery — (e.g. the goal is to get people to try ridiculous, nonexistent commands in chat) With the older games (circa EQ era), these were much easier to pull off because the chat box didn’t resolve to the text color as the player was typing, but if you’re clever, you can still bag quite a few with these.

Usually the set up is thus: /gu (or /ooc, whatever) “hey, I didn’t know about this command before. You can get a count of online guild priests by typing /gu .countpriests. Wild.” Obviously, you should adjust that depending on the channel you’re using. If you’re sufficiently beguiling, guildchat should explode with a bunch of .countpriests. A few people will even /gu “I can’t get it to work.” (heh)

The possibilities are endless: .countraidresistaverage .countabsentpriests>5days. Last week, I bagged a few guildmates with .countdkpbalance. CMON, how could our guild DKP website be linked to Warcraft?? Noobs. Gotta love ’em.

3. The False Identity — (e.g. You make a character named similar to a game NPC or a common guild enemy) This is best, of course, if you can get a name through the naming filter VERY similar to the NPC or enemy, but vaguely similar is still amusing. Let’s say your guild is having trouble with Ragnaros lately. *cough* You make a noob character named Raggnaros or Ragnoras or whatever you can get past the naming filter, have your evil guildleader invite the noob to the guild, then you can run roughshod over guildchat with trash talk.

/gu you pukes will NEVER kill me!!!! /gu Domo says you suck!! /gu Looking forward to next time. Huggles and kisses!!

Even better if you can get a false ID login to the guild message boards because then you can post your trash on the forums, too, or if your guild uses a chat app outside of game, make a false ID to cause some mayhem there.

In EQ, back in the days of racing to spawns and intentional screwing of trigger mobs, our guild was constantly butting heads with a rival guild and their pissant guildleader. Enter the false ID character named similar to the pissant. We left that corpse all over the crowded downtime zones, usually in a compromising position with a naked troll corpse.

4. The Fake Mistell — (e.g. you fake a mistell of an incriminating nature or for amusement purposes) Now be warned, this one is WAY overused, so to be amusing, you have to be extra clever. /gu “r I slowly undo your [Robes of Prophecy]” + “oops MT” just won’t cut it anymore. Actually, that’s not bad, but you get the point: clever is paramount with an overused prank.

How bout this? Next time in a guild raid, you trot out something cryptic like this: /ra r shit, you’re gonna kick him from the raid right now? /ra oh. sorry all. Or, how bout /ra r jesus, how much did he steal from our guild bank?

That’s all you’d need, let them ponder that for a while.

5. Class Ability Pranks — (e.g. using a class skill or spell, you produce the unexpected) Caution is needed here, especially during a raid or an important guild function, but if it’s a skill/spell that will merely cause confusion and not endanger the guild objectives, have at it.

In Warcraft as a rogue, my best bet for a prank skill is vanish. This is the rogue skill where we can stealth even when we have mob aggro. It’s not 100 percent … shame that, but it’s pretty damn reliable, especially with a second chance due to the rogue Preparation skill. So, rogue is on pull duty, he/she heads to the next group of mobs to stun (called sap) one, instead it’s fun to scare the group a little by pulling all of the mobs by faking a failed sap, then vanish, wait for sighs of relief, repeat, wait for sighs of relief and now you hope that sap does work because both vanishes are gone.

Alternatively, I’ve tried the fake pickpocket. While off pulling, I’ll tell the group, “wow, look what I just got on a pickpocket [Link to Juicy Bind on Equip Blue or Purple Item] That should sell nicely!”

Showmanship. It’s all about the showmanship.

I wish I had a level 60 mage. They have the best prank of all: at raid’s end, when everyone wants to leave and the raid leader calls for a mage portal, I’d throw up a Darnassassass portal instead of the expected, and desired, Ironforge portal.

Hope you have your hearthstone available mates, else you’ve got a looooooong ride back to Ironforge.

I’d probably get a stiff DKP penalty for that, but it would be worth it. So, so worth it.

(credit for bastardized intro)