Diablo III released back in 2012, followed by the game's Reaper of Souls expansion two years later in 2014. Now, ahead of BlizzCon 2016, rumors are swirling that a Diablo IV announcement is on the way, and it all has to do with an unusual D&D dice.
Within the BlizzCon 2016 goody bag is a set of Diablo-themed dice for use in games like Dungeon and Dragons, among other RPGs. That's not the unusual part. It makes sense that Blizzard would include a Diablo item in its goody bag, and number-driven RPGs like Diablo owe their success to D&D and other tabletop RPGs that use dice. What is unusual is that one of the dice, the four-sided die, is basically unusable.
A normal four-sided die has the same number in the same position on each face of the die. The Diablo-themed four-sided die included in the goody bag is strange because that isn't the case. Whether due to a printing error or some subtle clue by Blizzard, the die only has two of the same number in any given position, with the third number being the number four.
Cue conspiracy theories. One number sequence in particular has fans putting on their tin foil hats, as reading the die from one position creates either the number sequence 1-1-4 or 4-1-1. If you combine those two "1"s together, you get a date in the form of 4-11 or 11-4. If you interpret the "11" as the eleventh month of the year, November, the dates read as November 4, which is the same day that BlizzCon 2016 starts.
Coincidence? Hard to say. Adding to the theory is the fact that four-sided dice are often referred to as "D4" for short, which many fans believe may be yet another reference to an upcoming Diablo 4 announcement.
The theory itself is from a few months back, but recent events have brought it back to the forefront. Recently adding fuel to the conspiracy fire is that Diablo II project lead David Brevik (who currently isn't employed at Blizzard) recently tweeted "For 20 years, Diablo-like games have evolved & surprised us. I'm proud to be the adviser for the game that pushes this genre to new heights," alongside an image of the constellation Libra.
An even more recent tweet from Brevik states that despite all the speculation and hope, he is not, in fact, working on the Diablo franchise, not that it's stopping fans from believing otherwise. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Diablo franchise, which would certainly be a great time to announce a new game. It's worth noting that last year's BlizzCon saw major announcements for every Blizzard franchise except from Diablo.
It's no secret that some kind of Diablo project is in the works. A job listing in August of last year for an unnamed Diablo project seemed to indicate that either Diablo IV or a new Diablo III expansion was in the works. This new theory may be too good to be true, but it seems inevitable that fans will be seeing more from the Diablo franchise sooner rather than later. We will know come BlizzCon.
