Project Lore

[caption id="attachment_8703" align="alignright" width="200" caption="What in the World of Warcraft could it be?"][/caption] Something is astir at Blizzard, but they're not letting the cat out of the bag... yet, anyway. An image popped up on the Warcraft Twitter account earlier today, followed by the words "It's Coming - 11/25." Being only two days out, that means that we'll get to find out pretty soon, but that's more than enough time for the interwebs to go crazy over a mysterious picture. So what could it mean? Time to get all detective on this mother. We're going to analyze this photo so hard, it'll make Billy Bush blush! As you can plainly see, the picture is an upside-down, close-up view of several objects placed in a tableau, though not one of them seems to make any sense with the others (I suppose that's the point). And that's if we're at all correct about what the objects are in the first place:

Exhibit 1 (That Brown Thing In The Middle) -- Honestly, the best guess I've heard about this so far? A stack of Ritz crackers with peanut butter on top. I'm not sure about the peanut butter (the consistency looks a little off), but the "stack" does seem to feature the distinctive ridges on the outside of a Ritz. And down at the bottom there, it looks like a couple of the crackers have had their edges chipped off. Not on purpose, of course. Everyone who's ever eaten a pack of Ritz knows that this an incomplete cracker or two is simply part of the deal! Exhibit 2 (The Long White Thing Along The Side) -- People have speculated that this might be a length of rope or a rubber dog toy. But if it was rope, I'd expect it twine to be wound all the way around, which it isn't. As for the dog toy, they'll make just about anything into a chewable, rubberized plaything these days, won't they? Personally, I think it looks more like bone, which would be decidedly more Warcraft-y than a lot of the other guesses. Exhibit 3 (The "Surface") -- These objects are resting on something, but even what that is isn't entirely clear. The surface appears to be grey and flecked with mineral, like stone. And also like your average rock, it's not completely flat, either. There are clear indentations and curves running along the face of it. There is a flame pattern painted onto it, which a few have speculated to be the Scarlet Crusade tabard design. But that doesn't seem quite right, because the "fire" in this image is double-pronged, and the Scarlet Crusade emblem is not. Exhibit 4 (The Black Disc) -- No idea what this is. We can only see a small part of it, and it may either be attached to or laying on top of "The Long White Thing."

When whatever this is is eventually revealed, I'm sure all of these guesses will be rendered completely wrong, but it's the best we've got for the time being. The quality of the image, undoubtedly intentional, does a lot to obscure the fine details, but the last time Blizzard pulled an image puzzle like this, it resulted in a really odd purple penguin thing somehow related to the announcement of Diablo III. In that sense, it makes you wonder whether or not we'll get better or more full glimpses of these objects over the next couple of days. Likewise, the last time @Warcraft  teased anything significant, we got a preview for The Abyssal Maw. So far I've heard everything from Cataclysm Alpha (false, they never announce those, and they're highly restrictive anyway) to a 5th Anniversary birthday cake (possible?) to a teaser for the World of Warcraft movie (seems a little early, doesn't it?). The best guess I've found is a trailer for 3.3, as well as a solid release date for the upcoming patch, which would be nice and, I think, wound fit the "scope" of a Twitter-based announcement. Trouble is that even a good idea like that doesn't make the mysterious teaser image any easier to decipher. So I leave it up to you, readers! Maybe you can connect the dots better than the rest of us! Tell us what you make of this picture, as well as what you think it might be announcing!