We may earn a commission when you buy through links in our articles. Learn more.

Blizzard tease a thing called Project Blackstone; UPDATE: It’s a StarCraft 2 Terran thing!

project_blackstone

Oh dear. It’s scarcely 10 o’clock and a response team has already been dispatched to my location by an organisation which almost certainly has access to a black-clad private army. Blizzard.

Update: We’re in. PCGamesN hacker Nick ran the code through a HEX translator, or something, and we’ve found a password. Details below, if you’d like them.

I was trying to log into the Project Blackstone site, you see, and this “commensurate” response was prompted by one failed login attempt too many. If you would, it might help if you do the same – perhaps split their focus, give me a fighting chance?

If you don’t mind.

While we wait, I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to speculate what on Earth Project Blackstone might be. Or to pick a few digits from this source code:-

?HX?cec27e03c51e1b18bc89e78003788ed0e87080f64da416cffda68f0d2cb3e9893ef5bcf00613
b5dfdbb3827240a2d6f3ebc0ff1989fa2187c016722f53d141d2a7cd6f678118d6d425eecca627a4
a85138180a6fbe74934ab51c31aa15811d06ca320390ee5781cd233ae7377a8d807caeeefe7267c4c6c9ca032124e1db8f361c3b4918a3931c119bcc3ac62ecbf4e09f7a95223d0bbe9f53415920db1ba3eb8f2bc85dc0e2e7a46d40b9c908777f59ea6197851569301788f38ea07b07e2245f92cc95a67a621726d5631c77fa637b4cd15daaa1a77de5e82e7ebcb73ca6803927adf975864c96b94e13aa542ad63be8f0e6ad1558aa4e7eaba0567751050ad858459ec4c0fbef5ce9aab20500fade?H

Our Nick has surmised that the password can’t be longer than 20 characters, thanks to this passage:-

Update: Behind the security wall is an email exchange between one Dr Helek Branamoor and an unhappy Talen Ayers of the Blackstone Research Staff. The subject? A cancelled barbecue and some “surprising similarities between the zerg larva’s pluripotent cellular structures and our own embryonic stem cells”. This looks like the beginning of a month-long Heart of the Swarm info campaign.

The password? Y7_$0>0k_3