Diablo III was originally intended as an MMO

[garyopa]

According to Runic Games boss Max Schafer.



Max Schafer, who was the executive producer on Diablo and Diablo II, said that Blizzard originally intended to develop Diablo III as an MMO.

Runic boss Max Schaefer (one of the original developers behind Diablo), has said Blizzard originally intended to develop Diablo III as an MMO.

In an interview with Games.on.net, he stated that -in its earliest iteration- Diablo 3 was being designed as a "Diablo version of World of Warcraft."

"When I was working at Blizzard a million years ago we were working on Diablo 3 and it was an MMO. We were going to do the Diablo version of World of Warcraft. Blizzard obviously changed that pretty quickly, so we left to start Flagship Studios and we brought in a lot of the guys, so they rebooted with their own team."

Schafer explains by the time development on the game was brought in-house, Blizzard simply had "different design priorities and goals."

Runic Games is the studio behind the dungeon crawler Torchlight and the upcoming Torchlight II. According to Schaefer pre-sales of Torchlight II on Steam went up 40% the day Diablo III released, and have remained steady.

"We're doing pre-sales on steam, and the day Diablo 3 release they shot up 40 percent and have stayed up. They're bringing in lots of people into this genre, and people are becoming aware of what we're doing through them. We're kind of piggybacking on their marketing."

Torchlight II will be launching this summer.

NEWS SOURCE #1: Diablo 3 originally intended to be massively multiplayer game (via) TheVerge
NEWS SOURCE #2: Schaefer Diablo III was originally intended as an MMO (via) VG247

Our thanks to 'Gauss' for this news item!

[Anil8tr]

The RMAH is likely the only thing to have kept Diablo III from turning into an MMO. Had they taken the MMO route, it would have instantly killed the greatness that is Diablo for me.

[DEDDOA]

I remember their was talk about subscription fees for the online side of the game, tho I guess tha was before they decided that their hacking issues with D2 would be easier to deal with if they passed a large chunk of their problem to the customers by making it online only.

[MadonnaProject]

So they could milmk more money out?