Major Blizzard announcement in August?

It's speculated that this August will see a major announcement from Blizzard on a new game, after the developer announced that its Blizzcon 2007 event will be happening in California on the 3rd and 4th of the month.

You'll recall that Blizzard used Blizzcon 2005 as the stage to rip the curtain back on World of Warcraft expansion The Burning Crusade.

In August 2006, the developer said it planned to make a major product announcement this year. At the time, many thought Blizzard was talking about StarCraft 2, rumors on which hit the headlines yesterday.

But let's not forget Diablo either, a third installment in the RPG series the subject of much rumor too and, like StarCraft 2, destined to see the light of day. It's been wondered whether Blizzard will take either of these IPs into the MMORPG genre and follow in the footsteps of Warcraft - it seems unlikely, but who knows?

And then it could be taking any of its IPs into uncharted genre waters for those properties, as it did with StarCraft with the ill-fated StarCraft: Ghost. Hell, maybe it's going to re-reveal StarCraft: Ghost in a fresh light.

Blizzard's parent company Vivendi is holding a press event in the US currently, where we know for a fact some big announcements were set to happen but for one reason or another were pulled. And big announcements don't come much, ah, bigger, than the unveil of a brand new Blizzard project.

Has Vivendi held off so Blizzard can rock Blizzcon 2007 and its fans with major news? We await the event with bated breath.

April 13, 2007