by JR Cook - 8 years ago     show comments

As most Blizzard Entertainment fans are well aware of by now, World of Warcraft released its latest expansion, Legion, in late August 2016. Many have been lauding the success of the expansion over the last few weeks, particularly citing the Diablo-esque changes as bringing a breath of fresh air. We know that both Game Designer John Yang and Systems Designer Don Vu – originally developers on Diablo III and the Reaper of Souls expansion – went over to help out with Legion and clearly they are making their influence felt.

It doesn’t stop there though! The first major patch for Legion is set to launch soon and people have already begun to datamine and find some interesting tidbits. Chief among them for our interests are several items and achievements that pertain specifically to the 20th anniversary of the Diablo franchise. First, the folks at Wowhead found some classic Tristram music in this patch, which they have uploaded to Youtube:

There also seems to be an achievement potentially tied to an in-game event simply labeled “Diablo’s 20th Anniversary” and the subtext of “There is no cow level.” This Wowhead user noted post has an entry from a Wowhead user who noted that there are several items that may correspond with this event. These should be familiar to all of us fans of Diablo as they harken back to items from Diablo II.

As you can see in the screenshot above, some of the items include:

• the infamous twelve-string guitar, which was used to create the Tristram theme;
• a Stone of Jordan, which was widely duped and used as currency at one point in Diablo II;
• a Horadric Satchel as a callout to Deckard Cain;
• as well as classic Scrolls and Tomes of Town Portal.

Now what does this all mean? It’s worth noting that most, if not all of these easter eggs can be specifically tied to Diablo II, so some are beginning to suspect that this is further evidence pointing towards a Diablo II HD remake or update or something that will bring that game in particular back to the forefront. All we can do is speculate at this point, but perhaps once the event officially goes live, we may have more concrete evidence on just how big this will be and maybe the WoW community will end up helping us Diablo fanatics figure out what lies in wait for the future of our beloved franchise.