Easter Egg
Easter Eggs are surprise features or bonus content included in the game as a treat for the fans.
These can be major features, such as Diablo 2's {{iw}Secret_Cow_Level Secret Cow Level}}, but more commonly they are smaller inside jokes. Names of the designers or prominent members of the fansite community used for items or monsters or mercenaries (all of these were found in Diablo 2), for instance.
Official Comments
The Diablo 3 team has not yet revealed any of the Easter Eggs they have planned for Diablo 3 (of course not, or they wouldn't be surprises!) but they've spoken in general terms about wanting to include such surprises and bonuses.
Jay Wilson, August 2008: [1]
- We don’t really know at this point. I really like the idea of secret stuff that Diablo II put forward, but it’s not the kind of thing we would decide this early. But if we have something, I can assure people will be happy with it.
- I will say the thing I liked about the cow level was that it wasn’t just fluff; there was stuff that you could do there that actually had purpose within the game. The thing I didn’t like about it was that it almost replaced part of the game. And so, if we looked to add something like that, we’d be a little smarter about it. We would want it to have a function within the game, but we wouldn’t want it to replace any core content, which is something that I think the cow level really did.
- Diablo II had a lot of little oddities to it that made the experience not as usable. I certainly wouldn’t want things like, ‘Don’t kill the cow king because we’ve got to keep the level open!’ We would avoid scenarios like that. The secret of a cow level is a cool secret. The secret that you’re not supposed to kill the king because you’ll ruin the cow level forever — that’s a bad secret. So we would try to get rid of some of the bad ones.
Blizzcon 2009: [2]
- Slashdot: The Diablo franchise is especially iconic for things like easter eggs and secrets. Can we expect the same of depth in Diablo III? Any hints?
- Leonard Boyarsky: No, no hints. They wouldn't be easter eggs then. We'll probably drop some hints here and there, maybe post some easter eggs on the web for people to dig out. Maybe some red herrings to send people in the wrong direction, but most of that stuff just comes naturally during development. As you develop areas, these things come up, and we're always throwing around ideas. So yeah, we talk about that all the time, and we are planning on doing quite a bit of that stuff.
They even included some in the Blizzcon demo build itself, in 2009. [3]
- Kevin Martens: There's some Easter Eggs.
- Leonard Boyarsky: Yeah, there's something hidden in there. It's just fun stuff. It's nothing that the people are going to be like, "Oh my God, I found this thing. I found the fifth class!" Nothing like that. It's just fun little jokes here and there.
Secret Rainbow Level?
The most likely early contender for a secret level style of Easter Egg in Diablo 3 developed shortly after the game was announced. The early fan complaints about rainbows and bright colors that turned into the Art Controversy led to numerous jokes about rainbows, unicorns, happy clouds, and such. The D3 Team parodied this idea with their hugely-popular Blizzcon 2008 t-shirts, and some months later, when Diablo 3 Community Manager Bashiok posted a photoshopped Diablo 3 screenshot featuring a unicorn apparently farting a rainbow that created a deadly "love combo" of slaughtered monsters, the "Secret Rainbow Level" rumors were off and running.
This is entirely speculative, but it's not out of the realm of possibilities. The Diablo II Secret Cow Level got its start in similar fashion; it was just an April Fool's joke for a screenshot, made in response to the persistent Diablo I secret cow level rumors, and there was so much fan reaction and enjoyment that the team went ahead and put it into the game. The D3 Team is under no compunction to include a joke secret level, but Blizzard designers have always shown a good sense of humor, and as famous and enjoyed as the D2 secret level was, they've go to be feeling some pressure to live up to that standard with Diablo III.
Only time, and possibly April Fool's screenshots, will tell.
