Diablo 2 HD teaser site appears, but Blizzard says it's not official

An ominous-looking website has appeared at diablo2hd.com, warning one and all that “Evil Has Survived,” and counting down to something. In between, the skeletal face of the Lord of Terror himself, Diablo, leers malevolently. The timer is set to hit zero at the beginning of BlizzCon, and a /whois shows that the site was created on August 18, 2016—almost one year to the day after it was reported that a new Diablo project was getting underway. The pieces are finally coming together!

Except, sorry folks, but they're not. I reached out to Blizzard to ask about the site, and was told bluntly, “This isn't ours.” It is, I'll admit, a disappointing outcome: The pre-confirmation consensus among the PC Gamer cognoscenti was that the site was fake, but Diablo 2 is my second-favorite Blizzard game (the original takes the top spot) and the prospect of a full-on HD remaster was, even if only for a moment, very exciting.

That's not to say that something along those lines won't happen eventually. That art director job listing has apparently been filled (it's no longer listed, anyway), but it was real, and Blizzard's search for a Diablo game director to replace the departed Josh Mosqueira is a clear sign that there's life left in the ol' demon yet. But this is not that, and whatever Blizzard is getting up to, it's keeping a lid on it for now. 

BlizzCon 2016 will run from November 4-5. Virtual tickets are available for purchase at blizzcon.com. And if the Diablo twitter account's teasing is any indication, there might end up being something new and devilish at Blizzcon, anyway.

Andy Chalk

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.