SearchNew Blizzard Announcement
Posted by Jonatan "Mazor" Littke 3 years ago
A new splash image is up at Blizzard.com and tradition tells us that this means a new game. Strong indications say that it's Diablo 3.
The latest updates can be found in the bottom of this news!
The announcement is most likely to be made this weekend at Blizzard's
World Wide Invitational in Paris, where GosuGamers will be on-the-spot.
Splash image day 1
The history of Diablo III rumours
Gaming Steve, claims that Diablo III was completed but "wasn't fun" and thus moved to the main head quarters where "the bigwigs in Irvine could better track and follow the development of [Diablo 3]".
Even if that would not be true, Blizzard stated that the team previously known as Blizzard North "will continue work on an unannounced project".
"I have recently been to Bratislava in Slovak Republic for recording sessions with local Radio Symphony Orchestra, where we just recorded music for Diablo 3"
That is, according to GameSpot, the exact same location and orchestra that recorded the official music for Diablo II's expansion back, four months before the pack was released.
The StarCraft II team consist of 40 people, the World of WarCraft team are 135 and "team 3" are 40 people. Team 3, most likely the team previously known as Blizzard North (who made Diablo I and II), are "working on something really awesome. I can’t give you any hints, but it’s totally awesome", Frank Pearce told GamaSutra.
There's a lot more of this kind of information but this should give you a brief overview of the Diablo III related rumours. Note that we have not covered the details or rumours about any other possible game, even though such rumours might exist.
Monday, 23, 18.11 CET:
The speculations continue as for whether or not this is Diablo III.
WorldofWar.net claims to have solved the splash screen by finding that the image contains artwork from Arthas' runeblade. They made the conclusion that it's not Diablo III because of this.
Nonetheless, the tradition says that a new splash screen is always a new game, not a beta, patch or anything else. The only exception to this rule was when the current Battle.net website was released.
The second expansion to World of WarCraft, called Wrath of the Lich King, and StarCraft II, has already been announced. That most likely rules out the possibility of this being a new game in either of those series. That leaves us with Diablo and WarCraft, unless a new series is to be introduced or a really old one revided (Lost Vikings, anyone?).
It does indeed look like Arthas' runeblade. At this point, another WarCraft game seems unlike and that leaves us with the guess that this is a diversion rather than anything else.
Diversion or not -- we'll see about that. If Blizzard are true to the tradition, next splash image should be published around early morning tomorrow (Tuesday).
Tuesday, 24, 09.47 CET:
New splash image added:
Splash image day 2
We've also seen a new piece of a piece of artwork. The first piece, found yesterday, looked like this:
Artwork piece 1
The new piece, published today, was this:
Artwork piece 2
Whether or not these images are related to the game title is unknown, but obviously Blizzard is aware of subtly dropping these images in the source code of their web page, intentionally wanting us to see them.
NumbSchiller proved true to his nick and posted some interesting speculations about the numbers that these images all have. First of all, a number found in the URL of these pictures is 232309. NumbSchiller pointed out that in the alphabet, these numbers represent W, W and I, adding another hint to what it already as good as confirmed, that the new game will be at WWI.He also noted that the pieces of "artwork" were also numbered to something representable by the alphabet; yesterday's piece was called 04.jpg (the letter D), and today's picture was called 15.jpg (the letter O), thus giving us the letter combination D and O, which are the first and last letters of the word Diablo, as WildLife pointed out.
Also, today's rune added to the splash image is a Hel Rune from Diablo II, showing that yesterday's rune from WarCraft indeed wasn't the final answer.
Helrune
Helrune enlarged
Tuesday, 24, 13:28 CET
Oh, if we didn't mention that already, Diablo3.com was purchased by Blizzard earlier this spring. The site, now known as DiabloFans.com, was a community site for Diablo. At the time, "Blizzard said it acquires domain names all of the time", IGN reports.
Some of you may draw parallels to StarCraft2.com being owned by Blizzard which made you believe SC2 was going to be released, but be advised that StarCraft2.com was purchased by Blizzard around 1998.
If Diablo 3 indeed has been in the making the last couple of years then it is surprising to see that the domain name would not be acquired until now. Then again, if Diablo 3 is to be released, the domain needed to be purchased sooner or later, assuming the current standard of one-game-one-domain is to be kept.
Artwork piece 2
Wednesday, 25, 12:21 CET
A couple of hours ago the ice broke open a little bit more, as expected. There's also no great surprise that today's "rune" is the mark of the Protoss, giving us one from each of the major series of Blizzard.
Here's today's splash:
Splash image day 3
Today's rune
Updated image of the artworks:
Artwork piece 3
Thursday, 26, 13:05 CET:
The ice is opening more and more, and some say they can see a face in the stars. It could just be big snow flakes. Another rune has been added in the bottom right.
Splash image day 4
And the penguin-lookalike has gotten an update too, where the name of the image is cold:
Artwork piece 4
Friday, 27, 09.58 CET:
Well, oh, well, isn't that interesting.
The penguin is complete:
Spash for Day 5
We've cleared this news post or all the old images and changed them to links if you still want to see them.
Tomorrow just after 13.00 (1PM) we will know who's looking at us. GosuGamers will be on-the-spot giving you live updates. We'll be posting whatever new information we get into this news and as soon as the new game is announced, we'll add a new headline on the front page so make sure to comment in that news post instead!
I (Mazor) will be leaving this afternoon and
VildaMalin (StarCraft section leader) is just about to leave for her flight down to Paris as well. If you have any questions to Blizzard about the new game, do start a forum thread and submit all of them there, and we'll make sure to try to forward them.
Saturday, 28, 09.57 CET:
We're at the event! VildaMalin and I are waiting at the opening ceremony that should begin in about two hours. We've got a WiFi connection here so we'll definitely try to give live updates assuming the net is not overloaded.
I can give you an interesting update: In the goody bag everyone receives at WWI, you get a 'Diablo Journal' each, a black little book with Diablo on the front. No suprise there, eh? :)
The splash image has changed, where the runes are more lit up and the face in the void is much clearer.
Saturday, 28, 11:28 CET:
Not much left now. We're sitting here at the main stage, third row from the front, waiting for the annoucement. We have internet connection still, so looks like we'll remain online.
We're guessing it's going to be announced at 12.00 since the stream begins 15 minutes before.
Make sure to check the stream that begins in 15 minutes.
After this there will be a press conference in which we'll attend, giving you Q&A's from the press to the Blizzard Staff.
Expect more updates shortly!
Saturday, 28, 11:38 CET:
Now that we're just waiting, let me describe what I see so far. We're at the 'main stage' where perhaps a thousand people can sit. I honestly don't know, really hard to estimate, but a lot of people. Several have to sit at the tournament stages where the opening ceremony is broadcasted to.
We're in the press area with lots of international press. I heard there's some 300 press invited. We have a little corner here for at the third and fourth row from the front, with us, SCLegacy, TeamLiquid and StarCraft.org represented. We also met guys from SC2 ESP, WGT and other sites.
The main stage has four really, really big screens, and loud music is being played with some Blizzard art running in the backgrounds.
We begin in 4 minutes! :)
K live updating now, its is beginning with lots of nice art flashing by.
It's awesome so far! All the screens projecting different things, real cinematic experience.
It's a lookback of all the games now, Diablo I just flashed by. Now we see SC2.
Here's Kerrigan and here comes Arthas of WC3.
Short introduction is over, two people entering stage. They'll be doing it in English and French simultaneously, taking turns in talking. Good for me who update live :D
We're being welcomed, "make some noise".
Someone Frederik Menou was just presented on the stage, thanking the players and the fans for being here. He's talking about the European offices of Blizzard and mentions that WoW was released in 4 European countries etc. Actually this might not be so interesting for you guys, hehe.
WWI was just declared open.
Some special guests are being presented.
Lots of the executives of Blizzard were just presented and applaused: Rob Pardo, Mike Morhaime, Leo Howard (?), etc.
Progamers are being welcomed on stage.
Savior comes first, I see Mondragon and Dreiven, all the StarCraft players are there.
I see Savior, Stork, Sea[Shield], Mondragon, Dreiven (said he was from Ukraine, he looked mad and then they changed to Poland :D), Idra and one of the Koreans in between. Haha you guys know the gamers better than I do, I'm just a code monkey these days. lol :D
Here comes WC3 progamers.
Here's ToD, FoV, Moon, Shy, Grubby, Lyn, XlorD, SaSe.
All the World of WarCraft teams are being presented. Wow, they're so many. I thought it was CS for a moment, hehe, then I realized where we are :)
The teams are Pandemic Black (?). MoB and fnatic, EG, SK-Gaming. Think I missed some. Oh, well.
Aha, that was WoW from the US, here comes the WoW teams from Europe.
Is this confusing? You're on GosuGamers, following the opening ceremony of the WWI.
Now the Asian WoW teams are being presented. I forgot to note the names of the European teams.
Raistlin reports that the stream has begun working now.
Some chattering on the screen now, I think they're done with the presentations etc, hopefully we're going to the annoucement!
Oh, CEO and Co-Founder of Blizzard; Mike Morhaime.
He's thanking all the players, all the fans. I think we were just on the stream, btw. Mike still holding his speech, he speaks of the WWI history, the gaming scene of Europe, etc.
Mike now speaks of games. I think we're announcing... oh, no, he's showing some look backs from the SC2 announcement on a video now.
Announcement probably right after this video.
Note: We'll be posting all about the new game in a separate news. Please make sure to comment in that one instead, once the game is out. I'll drop the link here and close this comment page, in order to keep it organized for you to follow.
Now the video is over, Mike is talking, taking long time because he knows everyone is on their toes... :D
He speaks of WWI and what the event has to offer.
OK, "One more thing we have to do". HERE IT COMES.
Diablo music playing on guitar. D3 being announced. Switching news to this one:
LINK: DIABLO 3 HAS BEEN ANNOUNCED
| Links |
| Blizzard.com - Check the splash screen |
| Comments \ Paging |
 1, 2, 3, 4 ... 9, 10, 11 
|
7
| Diablo III? Looks like my virginity is here to stay. |
| fuck diablo fuck ghost i want wc4 :( |
| Cool picture let's hope its not WoW -_- Go D3, Go Wc4, Go SC II! |
| no more RPG´s i am so tired of them , be original and make an adventure or a fps. |
| few week ago Blizzard aquired Diablo3.com, it always redirected to diablofans.com (previous owner of diablo3.com) - now http://diablo3.com is empty, so ... btw, Diablo II Ladder Reset Official and Diablo II Patch 1.12 Released - so diablo world is still alive :D |
| warcraft 4 |
| Starcraft 2: EXPANSION !? :p |
| Well, it's ice for one and with some light in the middle and there some red stuff in the ice aswell and that circles with that symble for . Cant really come up with something else. What does that "u" stand for? Doesnt it mean something? Anyone? |
| I got it guys! It has a meaning of beeing the the "beginning". So I think has more to do with that and not what game it is, hehe. Dont thank me. here look in this wiki-site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_%28letter%29 |
| Diablo 3 needs to be pretty good to compete with Diablo 2 but I think it can do it.. |
| guess this means the wc3 patch will be even later >.< |
| One more thing, it's reversed thru the ice I think. |
| sorry but you are all wrong World of Starcraft is comming :p |
| whoa I was right ;p |
| It is one more thing, whenI was playing with the picture in Photoshop I I think ithere is a 7 and 4 in those circles right beside the symbol. Can it mean anything? |
| Got to be diablo 3. Booo if they announce something about WOTLK, WOTLK has already been announced back in last aug. So nothing special at all. Gogogo diablo series, best serie beside sc. Warcrap's shit can kiss my ass. |
| BRATISLAVA? I HEARD THEY JUST GOT THE NEW TV SHOW... MIAMI VICE! |
| why dont they make a new game or something or invent something new, its so repetitive, starcraft, warcraft, diablo, then the same over again with variances, wow, diablo 3 and Wos (just guessing), i mean why dont they come up with a new invention of a game to increase their tittles, i mean they will release another MMORPG ,just imagine if a guy who have Wow and spent almost his all life and money from salary on that game, and decides to play D3 too, he will have to spent like 50 bucks (dont know the exact number) monthly for two RPG and thats too greedy coming form blizzard. MMORPG for me is the most greedy and tiring kind of genre especcially if you have a monthly fee also considering the time you have to spent for being just decent( i say it for experience O_O) . why dont they come with a race game or a adventure or a fps i dont know blizzard just stop doing RPG´s they make me sick, at least put them for free dont get advantage of others pocket. |
| #28 has a point, but I still hope Diablo III comes out. The reason Diablo II isn't that great is because its the SAME THING over and OVER... Hopefully Diablo III won't be like that, and will have a wider array of items + etc.. |
| wow sounds great :D cannot wait for it :D |
| fuck off diablo |
| they should be focused on starcraft instead of any other products .... |
| Or maybe blizzard is just fucking you all whackos up =D and have randomly just put some pic in, instead of something related to this maybe-announced game?! Well, anyway I think its lich king ;p |
| No change pic atm. |
| In my opinion it will be D3, because the picture's name is ICE. SOSO Powers - ICE, FIRE, LIGHT! Right Click on picture and save image as... |
| a new symbol now.. hmm any idea what it means? |
We have a 4 = D and 15 = O. First and last letter in the name Diablo. It must have a meaning in my opinion. :) Go D3!!! |
| where do you get the 15 from? |
| Look at the source code : <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> |
We have a 4 = D and 15 = O. First and last letter in the name Diablo. It must have a meaning in my opinion. :) Go D3!!! D O T A !!!! HAHAHAHHA |
| Updated with some new stuff, thanks y'all for posting here. Keep searching for stuff and I'll update the news :-) |
| #133 and what if tomorrow you see a T ? :D |
| i get this "http://us.media.blizzard.com/232309/_images/ice2.jpg" when i check source, so i still dunno where you get the 15 from :D Edit: oh ok, the 15 is from the other pic, nvm. |
| Second rune in the splash = Hel Rune. http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2004-9/830 079/joshwakehelrune.jpg |
| -136 yeaaaaah ur right.. gogogogogo D3 ftw! |
| The first rune look like a Shael rune to anyone? I think it starts out the same but ends differently. Probably that lame Sword thing. Diablo 3: Wrath of Tyreal? Lol IDK |
| new symbol is definetly a Hel rune (runequality 15) from Diablo2. check it out here: http://www.battle.net/diablo2exp/items/runes.sht ml |
| -138 no.. the 1st symbol seems to be trully a hint to WotLK. But be sure we will see more hints next days |
| #140 Yeah, I'm just saying it starts out like a Shael. Blend of both games? Lol. Only time will tell. It will be really gay if it's about WotLK. What is there to announce? Dates aren't important, we know it's coming this year. |
| -141 problem is that WotLK was already announced so everyone expects a brand new game. You are right, i saw some comparing imgaes on www.diabloii.net where some similarity with a shale rune is shown but still i (and diabloii.net crew also) think its more similar to that imba WotLK sword rune :/ anyway, it would be too much easy to recognize the new game if 2 D2 runes are showed in two days... =) |
| #142 Why is there a top line in the first symbol and there isn't one as shown on the sword? Get what I'm saying? |
| 143 yea ur right a bit.. its realy similar to both shael and that rune on sword... hard to say. lets w8 till tomorrow morning for the next img and we will know more =) |
| #144 At least we know the 2nd symbol is no doubt a Hel. Nothing can oppose it. Yup, we'll have to wait 24 hours... |
| 145 yep. its hel for sure and to hell wow and the whole warcraft should go ^^ |
| Yeah, I'm sick of WoW. Better not be WC4 either. |
| this was posted by blizzard stuff member on official battle.net d2 forum: "Can someone refresh my memory a bit? If I remember correctly it was stated that 10 (?) new runewords were added with 1.11, with only 7 actually found or otherwise known? Am I leaving anything out?" so if the 1st symbol from yesterday is realy a shael rune, blizzard maybe want to give us a new runeword (because version 1.12 was released with D2lod ladder reset on 17th of June). So ShaelHelxxxxx? =) |
| Tomorrow there will be a Ko rune, the next day a Ohm rune. Shael Hel Ko Ohm Shall Hell Come! D3 ftw! |
| you should compare the ice-pics. in the 2nd pic there is much more light. looks like something wanne come out and i dont see any relationship with a sword here and btw, why the second pic is not as big as the first one? |
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