From “Warcraft II v1.33”
to “New expansion now available”

The 1996 homepage is a support notice with a menu attached. The patch is only for Warcraft II v1.3 (American), and the notes explain that older versions will show a wasteland tileset in place of the new Draenor one. Above it sit three small badges, Diablo, battle.net and Starcraft, and the line Be sure and check out the all new battle.net web site!

Diablo is still a promise in this capture. Blizzard dates the game's release to December 31, 1996, ten weeks after this page was saved.^[3] Battle.net is just as new: the company says it has connected its players since 1996.^[4] The sidebar icons are labelled News, Titles, Support, Library, Market and Employment Opportunities, and a line near the top says the site is best viewed with Netscape Navigator or Microsoft® Internet Explorer.

The company behind the page had money from an unusual source. Allen Adham, Frank Pearce and Mike Morhaime founded it in 1991 as Silicon & Synapse, self-funded, including money borrowed from their grandmothers.^[1]

The name on the logo was the third one. For a short while the studio was Chaos Studios, which clashed with another company's brand, so in 1994 a ballot went round the office. In Blizzard's own retelling, “Blizzard” won the vote, and the employee telling the story can't remember the runner-up.^[2]

By December 1997 the white column is gone, and StarCraft fills the middle with a slogan: The future is coming. And it's not a nice place to live. A year earlier journalists had a less flattering label for it. At E3 1996 journalists called it Orcs in Space, because the early build looked like Warcraft II. After the show the team scattered to work on Diablo, and technical director Bob Fitch rebuilt the whole engine in two months.^[2]

In May 1998, with StarCraft out, the homepage turns into a wall of press quotes. One of them reads, exactly as printed, "Amazing! XXXXX " GameCenter. Below, the news offers the 255k v1.01 patch, cheat codes and Starcraft T-shirts.

The February 1999 news is dated in the American style, and some items brag. On January 20: Starcraft named biggest selling computer game of 1998. On February 4: Battle.net remains largest online game service in the world. There's also a two-megabyte download of the Brood War intro music, which Requires Mp3 Player. The large promotional area in the middle of the 1999 page is blank in this capture, so it shows mostly black.

By our June 2000 capture the page has the layout it keeps through our 2008 capture: a big picture on the left, game logos along the top and a dated news column on the right. The first picture is Diablo II with GONE GOLD! stamped across it. The news explains: Clear your calendars, Diablo II has gone Gold! The game, the page adds, has initial orders in excess of 1.5 million copies worldwide.

Lower down, the column lists the mirror sites for the Diablo II stress test and warns Please do not contact us for access codes.

In September 2001 the left side belongs to a game that is three years from release. A large World of Warcraft logo sits beside the news, and a flag selector offers the U.S.A., France and Germany. One item invites readers to follow Brann, a dwarven explorer, through the forest of Elywnn. The forest in the game is called Elwynn.

In June 2002, a month before release, Warcraft III art fills the left side. The news column sells a Keith Parkinson Limited Edition Diablo II Print, 24 by 34 inches, signed and numbered by Parkinson.

In June 2003 the expansion gets the same treatment as Diablo II: Illidan, a Frozen Throne logo, Gone Gold! and In Stores Beginning July 1, 2003. The news names the winners of a contest called Show Us Your Viking Pride. The Current Projects row now holds World of Warcraft, Warcraft III, StarCraft: Ghost and Blizzard Classic Arcade.

Side track: the Warcraft III page, 2001–2019

Warcraft III had its own page at blizzard.com/war3/. In January 2001 it promises Five different races to command including Orcs, Humans, Undead, Demons and Night Elves, and says Warcraft III is expected to release by the second half of 2001 for Windows, with the Macintosh version by the end of 2001.

By January 2002 the page sits in a frame of carved stone, and the story text opens: It has been nearly fifteen years since the war between the orcs and humans ended. The April 2003 capture keeps that text and grows three menu links: Battle.net Features, Playable Demo and MP3s. Its feature list is down to Four Unique Races. The Demons are gone, and the four left are Undead, Night Elves, Orcs and Humans.

In January 2019, at us.blizzard.com/en-us/games/war3/, the page still sells the 2002 game, with a Buy it now button and Play as Four Mighty Races: Night Elves, Undead, Orcs and Humans.

The November 30, 2004 capture is a week into World of Warcraft. The game reached shops in North America, Australia and New Zealand on November 23.^[5] The page's own headline is World of Warcraft Selling Out in Stores Nationwide, and the numbers under it come from Blizzard's first day.

The flag selector has grown to five: U.S.A., Korea, UK, Germany and France. The big picture on the left is blank in this capture, and in the 2006 one.

In June 2005 the left side shows WoW's first two Battlegrounds, and a jobs box says Blizzard is growing and we have more openings than ever before! A second box hires for Blizzard's console team, illustrated with StarCraft: Ghost. That game sits in Current Projects in 2003, 2004 and 2005. By June 2006 the list has World of Warcraft and The Burning Crusade, and Ghost doesn't appear again in our captures. The 2006 news offers a download for the World of Warcraft pen-and-paper game, an adventure called Bones of Ironforge, and urges readers: Gather some friends, stack up on snacks, and get those dice rolling!

The June 2007 picture advertises The Armory, a World of Warcraft item database, with a golden helmet and a sword. The news is about BlizzCon. Tickets cost $100, up to five per billing address, and the next day's item reports that approximately half the available tickets went in the first 24 hours. StarCraft II has joined the Current Projects row.

Our May 2008 capture keeps the black layout. BlizzCon is back with 50% more hall space, a fan art contest asks for Arthas holding Frostmourne, and the hot job is a Senior Programmer for core technology that will be leveraged across all Blizzard games. Several promotional pictures in this capture are blank.

In our November 2009 capture the black page has gone. The address is now us.blizzard.com/en-us/, the logo sits in a blue header with Games, Company, Community, Support and Store, and the Lich King fills a wide picture above a row of game cards. Wowhead reported the overhaul on September 29, 2009, quoting Blizzard: Welcome to the newly redesigned Blizzard.com!^[6]

In the page's code, the first line of text is This site is best experienced with Flash. The featured item is a reminder that from November 11, 2009 every World of Warcraft player must merge their account with a Battle.net account to log in. The code's Pet Store announcement names two pets, Lil' K.T. and the Pandaren Monk.

By June 2010 Diablo III has the big picture. The featured story asks readers to Join the Dominion in StarCraft II's war, by taking the entrance exam. The code lists Polski among the language options, as it does in all our captures from 2010 to 2021. It also carries a bar, not shown in our replay, that offers View this site in English. That October, Blizzard announced that World of Warcraft had passed 12 million subscribers by its own count.^[5]

The June 2011 hero promotes BlizzCon, and the top news item is a video contest called Memories of Blizzard, part of Blizzard Entertainment's twentieth anniversary celebration. Twenty years earlier it was Silicon & Synapse, founded by three people with their own money and loans from their grandmothers.

The September 2012 page has a pandaren hero for Mists of Pandaria, which the code's news says launches September 25, 2012. Its newest item is a short notice: Important Security Update, dated August 9, with a link to read an important security update about your Battle.net account.

In June 2013 the big picture goes to Hearthstone, a card game. The news says Diablo III is coming to PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on September 3, so players can slay demons from the comfort of a couch.

By June 2014 the header reads Games, Company, Careers, Support and Shop, and the code's Shop menu lists Blizzard Gear and the Battle.net Shop. The hero shows Warlords of Draenor. The news column announces Diablo III: Reaper of Souls – Ultimate Evil Edition for four consoles.

Two months earlier, on April 1, 2014, Diablo's Angel of Death starred in a joke. Blizzard announced Happy Reaper, a web and mobile game in which players guide Malthael through ruins, collecting souls with clicks or taps.^[7] None of the April jokes is on our June capture of the homepage.

In June 2015 the hero is Heroes of the Storm, and the news says it's live: Grab your warglaives, load up your chain gun, and prepare to go ham on the core. Its initials were part of a joke too. On April 1, 2014 Blizzard “renamed” the last StarCraft II chapter Herald of the Stars, citing our audience’s love for the acronym HotS after Heart of the Swarm, Heroes of the Storm and Hearth (of the) Stone.^[8]

The June 2016 hero is a green-lit character for World of Warcraft: Legion, but the news belongs to Overwatch. One item is dated May 24 and headed Overwatch® Is Now Live!, and another, nine days later, is headed Overwatch Hits 7 Million Players. The launch guide had set one moment for the whole world: 4 p.m. PDT on May 23, already 1 a.m. on May 24 in Central Europe.^[9] So in California the launch was scheduled for May 23, a day before the homepage item's date.

In June 2017 Overwatch has the big picture, in the same blue layout as our 2009–2016 captures. The two featured stories announce a game Blizzard didn't make. Bungie's Destiny 2 is coming to PC exclusively through Battle.net, and the item's text in the code admits it's a little different from what you might normally expect.

Our June 2018 capture is at www.blizzard.com/en-us/ and shows a redesigned carousel above a horizontal Games row. The header logo doesn't load in our replays from 2018 to 2022. The Games menu in the page's code has two headings, Blizzard and Activision, and under Activision it lists Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 and Destiny 2. The code also contains account placeholders such as %USER_BATTLETAG_FULL%.

In June 2019 the big picture is a Call of Duty soldier with PREPARE TO GO DARK. In the menu code the heading now says Partner Games, and in 2020 it says Activision again. In the September 2021 menu code the heading is gone, and Call of Duty with it.

The footer has its own small change. In 2018 and 2019 it says Stay connected: Blizzard Battle.net Mobile App. In August 2017 Blizzard had dropped a plan to retire the Battle.net name after hearing from players, and said it would join the two words in print as Blizzard Battle.net. The note added: Take it from the developer formerly known as Silicon & Synapse, and Chaos Studios, names are important too.^[4] By our 2020 capture the footer says just Battle.net Mobile App.

The September 2021 hero is a cross-promotion: a six-month World of Warcraft subscription that comes with HEARTHSTONE GOODIES + MOUNT AND TOY.

By June 2022 the carousel is dark, with rounded buttons, and it announces an Overwatch 2 Reveal event on June 16 at 10 AM PT. Under it, a grid called Featured Games has three filter buttons: PC, Console and Mobile. The grid's Upcoming section includes Warcraft Arclight Rumble, a mobile strategy game.

The June 2023 slide needs five words: Diablo IV is now live. That October, Microsoft completed its purchase of Activision Blizzard.^[10] In the text of our 2024, 2025 and 2026 captures, neither Microsoft nor Xbox appears.

The carousel keeps counting down to expansions. The War Within arrives August 26 in 2024. In September 2025 World of Warcraft: Midnight says Adventure is calling you home and sells pre-purchases with Housing Early Access. The upcoming mobile game from 2022 has lost a word along the way. The 2026 page's code lists it as Warcraft Rumble.

In June 2026 Diablo IV: Lord of Hatred is the front slide: New expansion now available. The carousel's code also has an Overwatch slide titled A decade of heroes. Thirty years after the Warcraft II patch notes, the homepage is still announcing an expansion, this time with a Purchase Now button instead of a list of fixes.

1996 · Warcraft II v1.331996 · ThenJune 2026 · New expansionJune 2026

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