First, some background: a guy who played Diablo 2 for years got a DOL rune and experimented with it until it crushed the game. He got an error message … a series of meaningless numbers. Or are they?

64 69 61 62 6c 6f 20 33 20 20 30 39 2f 30 39 2f 30 39.

So why is this significant in ANY way? OK, this is the geek part: 64 69 61 62 6c 6f 20 33 20 20 30 39 2f 30 39 2f 30 39 is hex for : Diablo 3 09/09/09. That means that if you translate the hexadecimal code, it gives you Diablo 3’s release date.

Now, the critical part. How likely is that Diablo 2 developers knew in advance when Diablo 3 will be released? NOT LIKELY. At the same time, if I were head of development at Blizzard and I was a bit of a numerology freak… I’d pick EXACTLY this date. Why?

Well, it’s pretty obvious. 09-09-09 represents 666 if you turn it upside down. The number of the beast! (cue the Iron Maiden song here)

A recent rumor that Diablo III will be released BEFORE Starcraft 2 actually prompted Blizzard to officially address the issue of the release date.

Here’s the summary in short: Battle.net 2.0 will be released simultaneously with the release of Starcraft 2. The best guess for that is early 2009, with a Starcraft 2 beta coming out late in 2008.

So Diablo 3 will come out AFTER that … possibly by the end of 2009. An encouraging news will be if Blizzard have a playable “demo” at Blizzcon.

Update: Here’s the quote from Rob Pardo (Wired blog):

A lot of the way we develop is: We wanna make sure the game is really fun and the visual fidelity we want … we wanna make sure we have a small area that feels really done so we know what to build. So even though it looks really complete a lot of the content is just not there. We have a long ways to go to build each of the different acts in the game and put in all the quests and all the different monsters. We have a lot of development ahead of us before it will be something … It will definitely be out after StarCraft II.”

I hope this answers the last comment!

UPDATE: Diablo 3 is OFFICIAL! Live news from the event:

12:15 — Announcement…..!! Guy playing Diablo music on an acoustic guitar…

12:18 — Footage of large scale battles, comets streaking across the sky, demons, Diablo 3 officially announced.

12:20 — Jay Wilson, lead designer on Diablo 3 coming out. He’s going to demo the game.

12:20 — It’s apparently still an action RPG. Same interface — red
health and blue orbs. Skill bar at bottom. 3/4 overhead perspective.
Character with 2 axes hacking at demons in what appears to be a foggy
cathedral. Has a jumping attack where he smashes the two axes into the
ground.

(Watch Diablo 3 trailer here)

12:21 — The axe guy is the barbarian class. Says improvements have
been made, like the hotbar for skills. Using the mouse wheel and tab
key you can quickly switch between skills. Whoing inventory. Appears to
still have slot limits. Using enchanted axes with frost and lighting
,which stuns and freezes opponents.

12:25 — Each piece of gear is custom designed for each class. Barbarian puts on demonic sort of garb with giant devil horns. Barbarian can hop across gaps on the map. Barbarian dislodged a rock wall and dropped it on zombies, killing them. Demoing moving whirlwind attack.

12:33 — Witch doctor can cast out locus swarm, which spreads between targets and deals damage. Can summon mongrel things that he can cast locust swarm on, which buffs their damage. Outdoor environment now. Quite pretty in that vibrant, slightly cartoonish Blizzard graphical style. Like with StarCraft 2 and it’s similarities to the original, Diablo 3 looks and sounds, at least at a glance, quite similar to previous games. Witch doctor also has a mass fear type of ability.

12:36 — Multiplayer will work over battle.net. Heads into a final fight against some gigantic moving trees. Final boss here, called siegebreaker assault beast, is absolutely gigantic, maybe around six or seven times taller than the player characters.

12:37 — Demo ends. The crowd roars…

Update: Diablo 3 release date has been tentatively set to follow the launch of Starcraft 2 and Battle.net 2.0 some time in early 2009.

You can download the high-quality version from Blizzard’ssite.