Awaiting the Release of Diablo III: Blizzard Entertainment, Masters of Viral Marketing

There has been a lot stirring within Blizzard's headquarters as of late, and things are starting to come to a boil. A few months ago, Blizzard Entertainment announced the second World Wide Invitational (WWI) to be held on June 28 and 29, in Paris, France. And as always, it got the rumor mill stirring. Blizzard is known for holding events to announce new games, announcing the long-awaited for Starcraft 2 on the first WWI on May 19, 2007, along with an expansion to the oh-so-popular World of Warcraft game, entitled "Wrath of the Lich King" on August 3, 2007.

But what's even more fun, is how they go about the process. Preceding the last WWI, the official Blizzard websites (www.blizzard.com and www.battle.net) got a new teaser page, everyone who went to those websites was greeted with a time line, showing in order, every game in the Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo series ever released on PC. Every day the page updated with a picture of the next game, along with a quote, until the final day came, when the internet exploded with excitement as a new picture showed, featuring Starcraft II along with the new catchphrase "Hell, it's about time", which is a joke in itself due to the massive amounts of fans that were waiting for that very moment for nearly a decade.

They are now at it again. Going to www.Blizzard.com or www.Battle.net shows a new teaser, a picture of blue ice, slowly cracking in the center. Every day the ice is cracking open further and further, and it is expected to announce a new game on June 29th, the final day of WWI 08. Many rumors stirred, guessing at which game they will be announcing, and Blizzard is having fun with the huge uproar they are causing.

Along with the cracking ice, they are giving clues, easter eggs for the millions of Blizzard fans to hunt for and follow. The first hint was in the ice itself, as the ice looks VERY similar to the ice in an image on the WoW website.

But thats not all, their are markings on the ice in the picture of the Lich Kings sword, and an image was discovered within the teaser page, etched into it was a hint:

On the left side of the picture, etched into the ice, was a series of circles, with a symbol in the very center of it. Fans flocked to the image to take part in the hunt for what this symbol was, and it was discovered to be a Rune symbol, used in the sword of the Lich King, some have argued that it looks to be a "Shael rune" from the Diablo2 series, but it has been highly doubted by most.

This had many fans arguing with one another, as a large portion of the loyal Blizzard fans expected, wanted, and hoped for the game announcement to be Diablo III, but the main belief of what this symbol was that of the Symbol on the Lich Kings sword.

This still was just the beginning though, Blizzard knew people would comb through the website with a fine tooth comb looking for hints to the release, so they decided to have a little more fun. Fans soon discovered hints within the HTML code of the Blizzard website, and the final answer is still up for grabs.

If you go to www.Blizzard.com, right click the image and view the source, you will locate the link:
http://us.media.blizzard.com/232309/master.css

By going to the Master.css file, you gain access to another page, with more information, Within it, showed this information:
"/*.tundra {background:url(_images/04.jpg) no-repeat 0 0} */"

Using that information, Replace the master.css from the URL, to match that of the hint (Making the new URL http://us.media.blizzard.com/232309/_images/04.jpg) and hitting enter, you are given a piece of a picture, much like that of a puzzle piece.

Fans are still up in arms over what this means, what the picture is, what franchise it belongs to, what "tundra" means, this caused a huge uproar within the fans. Some believe it to be the Frozen Tundra, a location within the final stages of Diablo II, while others believe it to be an area in the new WOTLK expansion for WoW. Along with that, came guesses as to what the purple thing was in the picture. There have been tons of theories within the community, but no one knows for sure what it is until the final day.

But that wasn't the end, Blizzard has been updating its hints as time passes, every day giving another clue to the fans to salivate over.

The following day things changed for the better for all the Diablo fans, when the page was updated, the cracks in the ice grew larger, the hole bigger, and a brand new symbol in the upper right of the image. This was unmistakably the "Hel rune" symbol from Diablo II. When this was discovered, the entire blizzard fan base became engulfed in debate, what could this mean? A Warcraft AND a Diablo symbol in the same picture?

Along with that, came a new line in the master.css file, entitled "cavern" with the image being _images/15.jpg. This new section of the puzzle looked to match with the previous picture if you place it down and to the right. Fans again argued Cavern to be yet another section in the final act of Diablo II, while others said it could be a new unknown area to WOTLK:

However, this was not the end of things, The following night, a new update was given yet again, A third symbol, located near the bottom of the ice, along with the master.css line "icy" with the image name of _images/23.jpg, which lined up as the top right puzzle piece of the picture, connecting the previous two together, and revealing a purple slouching creature, now known through the fan base as either "The Purple Penguin" due to it's looks, and "Ducky" due to a failed guess as to what the image was.

The third symbol in the ice was quickly discovered to be the symbol for the Starcraft 2 race, the Protoss. This has thrown many fans off the hunt, stopping them dead in their tracks over what it could be leading to, as we now have symbols from all 3 Blizzard Franchises, and an image of an odd Purple creature which did not seem to match with any franchise.

Through all this, Blizzard has not admitted to anything yet, the news portions of their websites do not even acknowledge the teaser being underway. Blizzard reps have denied any speculation to a game release as of yet, though that is of little surprise as they never admit to anything, even the day before Starcraft 2 was announced, when asked about it, they simply answered "We do not have any announcements regarding that at this time."

However, this does not stop the growing rumors. One highly respected Diablo fan site, www.Diabloii.net, has posted an update on their home page, claiming to have an insider of Blizzard admit that Diablo III will be announced at the coming WWI, along with multiple other sites saying insiders have hinted to Diablo III.

Fans are currently glued to their monitors, wanting and waiting for the next update on Blizzards web page. What will the fourth hidden image reveal of this purple creature? What will the next title be for the image, what do the numbers 04, 15, and 23 have to do with everything? What will the next image be titled? and the most asked question as of now: What will the next symbol in the ice be?

It's still up for grabs, and everyone has their own opinions as to what will happen, but no one will know for sure, that is, until June 29th.