So over this past week Blizzard has been teasing us with daily changes to the splash page of www.blizzard.com. Everyone is expecting that these changes coincide with a major announcement coming up at the World Wide Invitation in Paris. I’ve been trying to keep up with the speculation and have decided I will add my own analysis and what I think is on the way.

First, the cracked ice background. Every day more of the ice is broken away and a new “rune” is added. Right now there are five of these “runes”, which are unknown symbols really, and they appear to form a pentagram. (Figure 1)

Figure 1

 In addition to the daily changes of the above image, there is also a hidden change to the page’s CSS document. Each day a new hidden CSS class is added and linked to an image. These images can be pieced together to form a drawing of a creature that resembles Barney so far. (Figure 2)

Figure 2

 The other cryptic thing about this is that each image is given a number as a file name. There has been a lot of people suspecting that these numbers correspond to letters in the alphabet. Let’s look more deeply at the CSS changes.

Figure 4 is a table illustrating what order the images were posted in, what CSS class they are a part of and what letter the image file name corresponds with. The second table is in the order as it appears in the CSS document.

The most recent class is Harbinger, which means a sign of things to come. The pentagram that can be drawn from the “runes” coupled with harbinger really hints at Diablo 3 being the answer to the riddle. Also, the eyes and scaly forehead that appear in the middle of the broken ice look very demonic.

 However, it can easily be argued that since the names of the CSS classes are all about cold and the new area, the Northend, in WoW will be cold that we should be looking for the Lich King. So I did, see figure 3. You know what, it very well could be Arthas, the Lich King there. I weened myself off of Warcrack a few years ago and I would love to see Diablo 3, so as I may be reaching a bit I am still going to try to convince myself that we can expect a Diablo 3 announcement.

Figure 3

If you associate the image file names with the letters and put them in the same order as the CSS, you get D-P-O-H-W. This may be the title of the game, perhaps it is “Diablo: Prince of H—– W——”.

The World of Warcraft players have been hoping the announcement is the start of the beta test for the newest expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. I really do not think that’s what it is, especially now given the facts, but I do not think Blizzard would put this much hype behind a beta release. I mean everyone knows the game is coming and the WoW fan boys and girls are anxiously awaiting the new classes, level cap and areas. However, I do see where the face behind ice could resemble Arthas, the Lich King. So a Wrath of the Lich King announcement is my second guess, but I am still leaning toward Diablo 3 for the time being. Starcraft 2 has been announced for a while, God knows when we will see it. I really do not think it is a Starcraft related announcement.

Right now, all fingers are pointing to Diablo and for me it is hard to do anything else. The pentagram, the eyes behind the ice, the letters and we have been expecting it for some time now. The only thing that has me confused is the purple monster. I suppose it could be a creature from Diablo 3, but to me it does not look devilish enough. Perhaps it has a face that was beat with the ugly stick, hopefully we will find out tomorrow. Maybe it’s Diablo 3 AND Wrath of the Lich King! *Splooge*

Figure 4