Starcraft 2: ‘Herald of the Stars’ is a Blizzard Prank, HoTs References, Easter Egg in HTML Code?

Blizzard’s upcoming Starcraft 2 installment, Herald of the Stars, is just an April Fools’ Day prank.
Starcraft 2: ‘Herald of the Stars’ is a Blizzard Prank, HoTs References, Easter Egg in HTML Code?
(Blizzard)
4/4/2014
Updated:
4/4/2014

Blizzard’s upcoming Starcraft 2 installment, Herald of the Stars, is just an April Fools’ Day prank.

An article appeared on the Starcraft 2 blog on April 1 saying that the planned third game in the Starcraft 2 series, Legacy of the Void, will be renamed Herald of the Stars.

The decision to change the name justified because “with recent successful titles Heart of the Swarm, Heroes of the Storm, and Hearth (of the) Stone, we took notice of players’ absolute love for this particular string of letters.”

“Over the last few years, through deep market analysis, ethnographic study, and highly advanced acoustic research, we have come to scientifically prove that the player community prefers games with titles that form the following acronym: HotS,” said fake Blizzard Head of Trend Studies game developer Jack Sterling.

“We were amazed. It’s quite unexpected. For some reason, people just synergize with the acronym HotS. In one study, 87% of respondents choose the HotS acronym over another random video game acronym. People seem to like how easy it is to say, how attractive they feel when saying it, and the sudden rise in body temperature associated with such an impactful acronym. Other than that, it’s baffling, but it’s awesome at the same time!”

Herald of the Stars will also unveil basic details of the mysterious Protoss race.

“‘What do they eat?’ ‘How do they breathe?’ ‘Do they breathe?’ ‘Hold on – they surely breathe, or how do they oxygenate their blood?’” said writers James Waugh and Justin Dye.

The article’s zany tone is not the only humorous thing. Littered throughout the article in a number of quirky combinations is the acronym “HoTs.”

Here are some instances where “HoTs” appears:

“Hitting on the Selection”

“Hierarch of the sage”

“Hold on – they surely (breathe)”

“(New) hairstyles on the Stalkers”

“Head of Trend Studies”

“hours of time searching”

“hair-brained, outlandish, theory-crafted suggestions”

“Herald of the Stars, our team saves”

“hold on to superior (acronyms)”

“hard on the spot”

“hug of the soul”

“hugely overhaul the sacred”

“heaps of total sense”

“hope our triumphant success”

“Heroes of the Storm”

“Hearth (of the) Stone”

 

The article links to a Herald of the Stars website. While there appears to be nothing special about it, accessing the page’s HTML code reveals what seems like a Blizzard hiring drive.


(Blizzard)

The link in the HTML to the Blizzard careers page can be found here.

 

Larry Ong is a New York-based journalist with Epoch Times. He writes about China and Hong Kong. He is also a graduate of the National University of Singapore, where he read history.
Related Topics