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The Release of the Archivist Class is a joke that was part of Blizzard's 2009 April Fool's Day materials. Other humor of the day included the Starcraft 2 "Terra-Tron" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformers Transformers] spoof, a World of Warcraft "Pimp my mount" spoof of MTV's [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pimp_my_ride Pimp my ride], and a "Dance Battles" joke for World of Warcraft which would allow teams to face off other teams in a dance off.
===Behind the Scenes Information===
* In the "Shush" skill video a piece of wood falls right as the Archivist explodes, but it wasn't a planned part of the explosion.
* The original concept of the joke was to create a Deckard Cain class, a frail old man more concerned with reading books than fighting, and so the existing Deckard Cain model was used for all of the website assets. Including an animated version sporting dyed hair and an eyepatch.</blockquote>
===Deckard Cain Re-skinned===
[[File:Archivist-vs-cain.jpg|left|Archivist vs. [[Deckard Cain]] in-game view.]]
Though Bashiok didn't point it out in his behind the scenes info, as soon as we saw Deckard Cain's ingame artwork and concept art, it became clear that he was the Archivist. The developers simply took the Cain model (including his animations) and changed a few of the colors.
There's no shame in this, as the class was clearly based on Cain's archetypal ancient scholar. It's also interesting to note that the Archivist has spell casting and death animations; fans noted that and wondered[http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=804347] if it could be a hint for the sorts of things we'd see Deckard Cain doing in the game.
==References==
