Ethan Haas Was Right (EHWR) was a viral marketing campaign developed by Mind Storm Labs to promote its role-playing game: Alpha Omega: The Beginning and The End.
The left star, which glowed blue, would activate one's mail program with the address filled in; sending an email to this address originally resulted in an automated reply giving several tips on how to solve the puzzles, but in mid-July 2007 this was changed to a more cryptic message.
The online marketing strategy was designed by Orlando-based Mind Storm Labs using characters and story borrowed from their role-playing game Alpha Omega: The Beginning and The End.
According to the official Alpha Omega game website, Haas was a 19th-century Parisian author, virtually unknown to the public.
Coincidentally and completely unrelated, Ethan Haas is also the name of the character first seen in The Class, a CBS sitcom starring Lizzy Caplan, who was in Cloverfield.
Mantra is the one who established the website, creating it as a test for those seeking to learn of Haas' prophecies, and leaving video recordings for those who completed the puzzles.
He has also sent out emails to those who used an address found on the website asking for help; after a certain amount of time, personalized help-mails stopped, and only an automatic response was sent, with a generic list of clues.
Personalized emails continued intermittently, for instance in response to an inquiry about a purported Ethan Haas profile on My Space, which Mantra dismissed.
Upon completing all five puzzles and watching all five videos, a sixth form of the sphere appears as a tablet with greenery growing around it in contrast to the destroyed city behind it.
Presumably, entering one's email will prompt a reminder to revisit the site closer to the 1st, though the exact purpose of this is not yet known for sure.
Everyone who completed the puzzles on the Ethan Haas website and gave their email addresses received a message on January 18, 2008 (the release date of Cloverfield).
The subject line read "The Revelations of Ethan Haas Has Begun 1-18-08", emphasizing the date, which was written in the same format that was used for the promotion of the film.
Lizzy Caplan, the actress playing Marlena in the film, was also on the sitcom The Class, in which she had a romantic interest in a character named Ethan Haas.
[4] traced domain record information to an individual with connections to an RPG company called Mind Storm Labs.
It was the first published evidence that Ethan Haas Was Right might be a promotion for that company's forthcoming role-playing game, Alpha Omega: The Beginning and The End.
Four days later, on July 11, 2007, Wraith, a former writer for the now-defunct Total Gamer News, unaware of any previous proof,[5] presented further evidence (along with a photo comparison[6] supporting his claim) that Ethan Haas indeed was a promotional website for the Mind Storm Labs game Alpha Omega: The Beginning and The End.
As of August 2, this was confirmed as the website has changed linking to a screen asking the following: Clicking "No" takes you back to the original site with the puzzles.