Damn, I was getting my hopes up there!

I'm still convinced that this is just a nose hair of Big D sitting in an ice block :)

A new peice to the puzzle?

http://img295.imageshack.us/img295/4277/ice11ti3.jpg


;)

Nooooooooo!

I'm sure Blizzard just copy/pasted Arthas into Diablo 3 due to the head of their 'bad guy design department' quitting.

Doesn't make sense to make a teaser for WotLK much tho, especially such an obvious one.

Remember the previous series preceding Starcraft 2? We don't know if and what the next images are going to show us. Its to early to tell.

bum.
poo.
pfff.

Im not sure this find 'solves' the picture. You'd think blizz would make sure to leave people guessing some more untill friday-saturday. Still, if history is anything to go by, it's not Wotlk related. Teaser pics have always been for a new game. I cant see any important enough announcement about wotlk to warrant teaser pics. Unless they decided to water down the whole thing. Don't give me beta as an answer, we all know that's coming anyway.

pretty sure diablo's color palette will stay red-ish.

I see a lot of red lines around the center!!!

I also see a face which the rune icon is on. The icon is just above the eye, down from that at 4oclock is a nose (that's very clear, even has the dent for the nostril), bit further down the ghost of a pair of lips and then on down to his chin. Crude and jagged I know but still.

Why only show one of the runes though? Where are the other ones. They are spaced pretty closely in the official Frostmourne art.

This could be a red herring.

Pfft, it's blatantly a partially obscured 'Sol' Rune.

/keeping the hope alive.

Anyone seen this? It may be a long shot, but still :P



So, something is gonna happen on the 28th :P

There probably will be a new picture each day similar to the countdown for Starcraft II.

Could also be a hint to the WotLK beta about to begin at or shortly after the WWI.

Well, the Diablo crew aren't letting go that easily.

The rune is also found in Diablo 2, it's a shael rune.

http://www.diabloii.net/n/667124/wwi-teaser-solved

and there's more image pokery lower down in that thread.

Diablo3.com no longer takes you to diablofans.com anymore also and just doesn't load :p

The way the image is settup is that every day the ice is going to crack away showing more of whatever is behind there.

A Blizzard friend (Leiah) posted that "Hell has finally frozen over" which also could be a hint of it being D3 since Leiah has given hints on things that Blizzard was working on before.

http://jadefury.blogspot.com/2008/06...nced-soon.html

1 The picture of Frostmourne is vertical.
2. the teaser pic of "frostmourne" is at an angle
Therefore, though those runes appear similar, they are not. Even if you discount this the runes are written differently. The teaser is obviously a Diablo 2 rune. (Can't remember which off the top of my head, but i know the rune. I think it's shael.) The rune on frostmourne is tall and straight on the left portion, the rune in the teaser is small and curved. This is basic handwriting people, come on. Whoever decided to put this on the front page as "Mystery solved" needs to make sure to check their sources/references.

"Hell has Finally Frozen over" featured on a splash blizzard did for patch 1.10 for Diablo as it was so long coming.

Am i the only person that thinks this is just a simple Lich king background? And not some sort of hidden message.

Probably. :)

I am not sure if I am allowed to link to it so I won't. Apparently there is a hidden image in the code that is called http://us.media.blizzard.com/232309/_images/04.jpg

The idea is that since the WWI encoding 232309=WWI this 04=D. If tomorrow shows a hidden image that is 09.jpg then I think its a pretty safe bet this is indeed about the announcement of a new diablo game.

If we then go on to note that to write the full word "DIABLO" we would need another 5 characters. If they release 1 character every day that would mean the 0 would be release on Saterday, the first day of the WWI 2008.

I was wondering where this image came from since I had never seen it until I checked out this topic and I check the WoW site fairly often.

Turns out it's in the way I navigate to the homepage. I use a bookmark that takes me straight to http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/index.xml which bypasses normal navigation.
Try it: www.worldofwarcraft.com vs. www.worldofwarcraft.com/index.xml

As for the picture, I've never been very good at this stuff. I just see a bunch of crystalline stuff that looks like ice with a fancy looking symbol/rune-thingie on the left hand side and with a glowie part in the middle.

Yeah. I'm pretty lousy with this stuff.

Art said it first, but I'm going to have to repeat it: the rune is a bit too clearly placed and is more than likely a red herring. Blizzard has been very playful with its fans in the past, and I hope this is the case moving forward.

There is, in fact, a lot of red in the center.

I'm still hopeful for Diablo III. Denial is a powerful tool.

I think that glyph is so visible and so clear compared to the rest of the image that it was put in specifically as a red herring.

Also keep in mind that it almost looks like electricity/energy is coming from the center of the image and breaking through the ice/stone/whatever. I think it's something else entirely.

I'd be disappointed if it didn't have something to do about D3 (to be released in 2012!), but I would be really shocked if it was simply something to do with WotLK.

Come on guys, this is very obviously a shael rune from Diablo. The circles around it only confirm that it was socketed into something.

http://www.lewt.com/images/items/runeShae.gif

Nothing else it could be! Looks a lot more like a shael than the rune from the sword, and that means the game will be here 20% faster!

New 'rune' appeared:



Other differences (animated):

The image has changed to 'ice2' now...looks like the middle is opening up and we have a new rune to examine!

It's the Hel rune from Diablo. And no, it's not visible on Frostmourne.

Add 3 more days until Friday, add 3 more runes (from Diablo), they will form a pentagram around the "opening". On the 6th day (Saturday), something in the middle will take shape.

Thanks.

How do you manage to post 7 damn times in a row Xeodus.

But yea this basically confirms Diablo 3.

Also day1's image was 04 (letter D)
Todays image was 15.jpg (letter O)

Leaves image numbers 09 (I), 01 (A), 02 (B), 12 (L) for the last 4 days up until and including Saturday. It could be that they are not in order since from 04 we did not go to 09, but directly to 15. Maybe it's an anagram?

Multiple Post Monster

om nom nom

Anyway, the new rune is definitely the Hel rune from D2x. I've noted it on me blog but someone may want to do a nice 'side by side' comparison jpg to distribute. The new hidden image is 15.jpg, and it looks to be 'bottom-right' whereas the first one, 04.jpg, seemed to be 'top-left'.

The up-shot is that if anything a new Diablo looked more possible today than yesterday.


*slinks off to think about fanart/christmas images of Diablo in a furry purple overcoat*

The puzzle seems like a bird thing.

"The Vikings have been Found"

Here's your nice side by side shot.

It's funny seeing all the double posting due to site lag :p

Nice work Elly

Woot, def looking for more fun. Hopefully it will have even more story like D2 did vs. D1

This is awesome. The first one was most definitely a shael, this one has even less doubt that it is the hel rune. This just leaves the question of who/what is breaking out of this rune protected crystal prison/chamber?

Baals soul making a comeback after lying dormant for years and years while it recollects itself and builds its strength back?

I know I'm probably opening myself up for major flames because I am "le gasp! Questioning the possibility of the most holy and coveted Diablo III coming", but how can it be DIII?

Didn't that part of Blizzard that made DI and DII leave Blizzard, meaning they technically don't have the rights (I think?)?

I could be wrong, and if so, please let me know otherwise.

You are misunderstanding how companies work.

Good example was when Pixar was going to leave Disney. Even though they did every single bit of work, Disney did nothing really in making the movies, the Toy Story rights still belonged to Disney and thus Pixar would not be allowed to make any more Toy Story movies.

Much of the same applies here - Even though the majority of the team that developed Diablo are now gone, the rights still belong to Blizzard. It's why they made the pretty much panned Hellgate London instead of D3.

So any ideas on Ice3? D2 Rune is not immediately popping into my head, but I never had many HRs sitting for long in my inv.

Not mine, but it seems to destroy the ideea of Diablo 3:

http://img254.imageshack.us/img254/4150/blizrozt2.jpg (too big for [img ])

I think that it's all about THIS. Blizzard's secret game codenamed Hydra...

Thanks to brutalistu from revolushii dot ro for hinting this out. :P

Makes sense.

I think I found where the third rune is from.

http://www.starcraft2.com/features/protoss/main.xml

So thats 3 refrences, WoW, Diablo and Starcraft. What next?

Oops, someone already got it :]

Cant wait to see what it is

Something completely different?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...eria_Cover.jpg

I dont think so, but its something to throw around.

I see EYES! They seem to follow me wherever I go.
And the "purple beast" looks more and more like a purple penguin to me. Maybe it's actually Diablo disguised as a penguin?

*PHOENIX WRIGHT Cornered Plays!*

OBJECTION!

But wait! Not only is there a Warcraft symbol on there... there is also a Protoss Emblem! It is clear that this is not exclusively related to WC!

WWII is not exclusive to Anyone Blizzard franchise that's for sure, but the splash image progression is certainly all about D3. Btw, I'd like to see an animated .gif or something with all the splash images, that would be sweetness.