Directional Pad

Blizzard teases us again

It must be that time again. Time for another Blizzard teaser page. Blizzard loves teaser pages, they do them more often than any other company I can think of. Usually they're a bit more complex than the one currently up at Battle.net, but . . whatever. I'll take what I can get.

The flash applet shown on the Battle.net mainpage randomly picks out one of several images, each a headshot of the following (War|Star)craft races: Terran, Zerg, Night Elf, Orc, Undead. Superimposed on top is tomorrow's date. Occasionally instead of the date you'll get ".999_ = 1", referring to last year's April Fool's Press Release, where they formally ended the debate over if .999 really does equal 1. It's also worth noting that the page has "get ready" in an HTML comment below the flash app.

So, what does this mean? We have no idea, but it's pretty safe to assume it isn't Starcraft:Ghost related (why would Warcraft characters be there?), WoW Expansion related (why would there be Terrans and Zerg?) or BlizzCon related (they've been nice and open about all BlizzCon stuff so far). Our crack team of professional internet investigators set out to brainstorm some possibilities, assuming those three are crossed off. Here's what we came up with. (Note that these are completely baseless speculation, and we are not in fact professionals, we just pretend to be them on the internet.)

• Theory 1: Blizzard announces forthcoming releases of Starcraft and Warcraft for the DS. I like this theory. I've thought about how nicely *craft games could work on the DS ever since it was originally announced. And really, at this point, the DS is the only platform I'd consider porting the games to. We know how horribly ports to standard consoles work, so you'd need the touchscreen and extra screen to handle all the necessary information. Combine that with the recently formalized and revealed DS WiFi dongle, and you'd have a quite compelling set of games.
• Theory 2: Blizzard announces some kind of crazy cross-franchise game. Think "Super Smash Craft" or "CraftKart". This theory sucks, and is Andy's fault. However, it would be underwhelming enough to fall in line with my previous statements about how no teaser countdown page has ever lived up to the hype. However, it's also insane, as I don't think the world really needs such a game.
• Theory 3 (Comedy Option): Blizzard announces another wave of action figures. Even though I listed this as the comedy option, I'd be perfectly content with it. My Hydralisk action figure needs a Dark Templar friend.

Please don't get your hopes up, though. It could be something, it could be nothing. We'll know tomorrow.

Update: looks like now Diablo's skull (complete with soulgem hole) is showing up along with the other heads. Now the connection is that these are representatives from all three games offered on Battle.net. This leads me to believe it'll be a general Battle.net upgrade. Possibly a redesign, possibly something even more mundane. Either way, it's now pretty safe to assume this isn't a new game, it's just Some Battle.net Thing.

Update 2: (07 OCT 2005 @ 18:19) After turning into Image Macro Hell for a few minutes, they finally pushed it out. As predicted in the last update, it's a full redesign of Battle.net, which is now a flash-infested crapfest, just like IGN and Gamespot. Super job, guys. In slightly better news, they also launched a new Mod Database for maps, mods, whatever. Apart from just cataloging stuff, they're also going to be doing spotlight maps. Blizzard has done stuff like this in the past, so it's nothing new, but they haven't done it exactly like this.

The Battle.net Forums are also currently down, presumably for some similar updates, but come on, no one's going to miss the BNet forums, right? Right?

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