New Blizzard Game to be unveiled at WWI [June 29?] -- DIABLO III?!

The Game Room
1

The last three days, Blizzard have been updating a splash picture at it’s homepage www.blizzard.com once a day. If you check the page, you’ll note that the ice in the middle is cracking, something which has happened gradually.

If you download the pic, and zoom in, you will also see three “runes” from the three different Blizzard franchises: a rune from Arthas’ sword, Frostmourne, in WC3/WoW, a Protoss writing rune from Starcraft and a Magic rune from Diablo.

A lot of fans think this means that Diablo III will be unveiled at World Wide Invitational, Blizzard’s private mini-E3. This is backed up by the fact that Blizzard has said they will be unveiling a new game. <source>

Speculation is rampant on Blizzard forums as well as other fan forums. Many anticipate this is related to the Wrath of the Lich King expansion for World of Warcraft, but tradition declares that when Blizzard uses the front page to tease, it’s always a new game. (The exception was the new battle.net system)

That this pertains to Wrath of the Lich King is seeminly obvious, as the ice-based theme correlate to the expansion-pack’s Northrend-themed content, but many fans feel this is a red herring thrown out by the sleazy Blizzard to throw us off our mark. A lot of this belief is borne from the fact that Blizzard threw the numbers 232309 out there as one of the picture’s names, as well as 0415 in another one. Numerically speaking, the cypher 232309 could translate to WWI and it follows that 0415 then would translate to DO. As in D-iabl-O. Many fans on wcreplays.com anticipate that the new pictures thrown up around midnight Irvine-time will be named 01, 02, 09 or 12, to complement this theory.

It goes without saying that the naming convention with Blizzard is not accidental. It never is. They’re right bastards about this stuff.

Two last things lets the fans feel good about jumping on the Diablo III bandwagon: the World Wide Invitational is being held on June 28th and 29th. June 29th would be the 8th Anniversary for Diablo II and Diablo II: Lord of Destruction was released on June 27th, one year later. As a last thing, argent fans have tried to hunt down the activity of the team known as “Blizzard North”, responsible for Diablo franchise (those that did not leave to form Flagship Studios) and they are currently believed to be the team that is not currently making Starcraft II or working on WoW: Wrath of the Lich King.

[Blizzard has 3 teams for development: 40 men working on SCII, 135 working on WoW and “Team 3”, currently unassigned]

Many fans now fear that Diablo III will go the way of WoW; straight in a handbasket to, appropriately enough, Hell.

More conspiracy information can be found at gosugamers.net. (SFW, unless your boss hates conspiracy theories)

Since I just hastily compiled this information for the Doper sofa-bound gaming masses, please allow me some slack in the veracity of the information for now. I’ll be back to fact check when I get off work.(in around three hours)

It’s an exciting day to be a gamer.

  • Guku
2

I think you’re looking too deep into the numbers thing. Blizzard screwed themselves with last year’s announcement of Starcraft 2 when Starcraft2.com redirected to Blizzard’s homepage with the same images (and a naming scheme that revealed each day’s images right from the start). The numbers are likely just a blowoff to keep snoopers out.

However, Blizzard is now the proud owner of Diablo3.com (which does not redirect to Blizzard’s homepage), when last year it was owned by an unaffiliated third party. So there you go.

3

I’ve always thought of WoW as a spiritual Diablo 3. But I would LOVE a Diablo MMO. I’d have to assume that any Diablo 3 would be an MMO, right?

Joe

4

World of Starcraft FTW.

5

I don’t believe they would make Diablo III into an MMO; half because I want them not to, half because I don’t think Blizzard would compete with themselves in the MMO market. NPD data suggests the MMO market is highly saturated as it is, and the only way Diablo III would gain a following would be to tap the WoW franchise’s fans. Which would mean shutting down, or funneling fans from, WoW. And I don’t believe that is likely.

Further, that would mean 2 of Blizzards’ 3 Big IPs are MMOs, and I don’t think that would benefit them storytelling-wise.

That’s at least looking at the word MMO in a traditional light. I’m of course open to believing that Diablo III will (would) use online play in new ways. The same way Battle.net’s WCIII and SC matchmaking revolutionized online play, I believe they could make a decent profit in the Diablo III online market. Micro-transactions and online advertising are a trope in current games, like the new Battlefield: Heroes game in which you buy widgets and weapons with real-life money, or Battlefield: 2142 which featured real-world advertising on its’ billboards. Not that I’m saying you’ll have Nikes thrown after you as a choice in footwear; just that there’s far more options in online play than the paid subscription model.

I do hope that with whatever new game they’re making, they make something not designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator in hardware. I’d like a Diablo with some gameplay refinements, or a brand new IP alltogether. The clickfest that is Diablo II doesn’t hold too well in 2008 gaming. (As Titan Quest found out, despite being arguably a better clone than Diablo II was a game)

6

Is it me, or does DO make more sense not as D-iabl-O but rather as “Diablo Online”, e.g. World of Diablo?

7

Hmm, I take that back. Seems that they expect it to spell out DIABLO after a few days.

I think this about cinches it for me:

http://blizzplanet.com/news/2474/

8

I hope they keep the core Diablo gameplay the same, but fix all the problems with Diablo 2.

Stuff to Keep
[ul]
[li]Isometric view (*Please *no FPS)[/li][li]Hack and slash[/li][li]Lots of shiny items[/li][li]Runewords[/li][li]PvP Balance[/li][li]Ladder/Non-Ladder play and Ladder-only items[/li][/ul]

Stuff to Fix
[ul]
[li]Horrible stash management (do away with mules please, just give us an infinite stash)[/li][li]No decent in-game currency[/li][li]More than 3 or 4 runs worth doing[/li][li]In-game trading, where you can manage items for sale in your store and people can search and purchase them with currency.[/li][/ul]

9

The letters now spell D - O -W - P. Speculation has turned in an ugly direction, and people are wondering if it will end up spelling out “POWNED”, which will then be featured on the shiny box-set of Wrath of the Lich King, which is what Blizzard was unveiling.

Damn them.

10

If that’s the case, the press that indicates it’s a new game was wrong.

Besides, everyone knows that it’s “pwned”, not “powned”. I’d be deeply disappointed in Blizzard if they couldn’t spell “pwned”!

I’d be surprised if Blizzard was jerking us around this hard. We know that there’s a third development team (other than WoW and SC2) working on a ‘secret project’. We know that several gaming magazines are squealing about a super-secret, highly anticipated game from a major developer, and one of the reviews referred to both ‘hell’ and ‘cows’.

11

Cowablo!

Play as one of three lethal characters as you halt the Bull of Terror, Cowablo, from emerging into the farm!
The mighty Burro! His Stubborn tree resist enemy attacks as his Kick tree takes out groups all at once! Or, sink up top your easrs and regenerate with Sunk Mule!

The sinister Sheep! Chew through enemies’ lawns and leave a swath of destruction across the forces of Bovine Evil!

The unstoppable Horse! Race past enemies at high speed, and carry a Human Rider minion who slashes at them while you charge!

12

NO! NO! NO! DO NOT RUIN MY FANTASY!!!

13

Tea. all. over. keyboard. Must clean. Before boss comes in.

14

I thought it would just be an official release date for Star Craft II.

15

From Digg:

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/53312

16

Hey, 29th June happens to be my birthday!

It’s about time for Diablo III, given the dismal performance of Hellgate London.

17

Seems to me that the best way a Diablo MMO would work is to make it a prequel. D3 is reportedly set 10 years after the destruction of the worldstone, with the two remaining Lesser Evils wreaking havoc on the Druids.

18

Please, dear Og, don’t let Diablo III be a MMO.

I hate to differ here, but I think a lot of people is going to be disappointed if D3 is a MMO, for what they want (me including) is a graphics update, storyline update and mechanics update of good old D2. You know, dungeon crawls, clickfest, no grievers, no PvP, no guild raids etc. Something simple, something that captures the essence of the clickfest RPG - epic boss fights, memorable instances, storyline and quests that make sense (no “0/10 Fallen Shamans Killed” please!), classes, skills, item drops and all that without all the hassle of subscription, servers downtime and etc.

(Worst, if it is going to be a MMO, most likely for people in Southeast Asia like me, it is going to be distrubuted through Hanbitsoft, and they totally treat people in the SEA like dust. Take Hellgate London for example).

This is counter-current to recent computer gaming trends I know, but I would hate it if D3 is online only.

19

Right here is why I think a prequel would work best for a MMO: it would essentially be a clean slate. It should also be sufficiently different from WoW, imagine being able to play a Horadrim! Or a pirate off Kurast’s coast, or one of Diablo’s minions, etc.

20

People would draw comparisons, definitely, if D3 is a MMO. At any rate, if it is a third person view, I expect it to look different from WoW style. Horror is one of the best themes about the Diablo series and the new game should reflect that. (Well, Diablo I did it so much better than Diablo II…). It should definitely feel different from WoW.