14 DAY TRIAL // Max Schafer, the co-founder of Runic Games and the former head of Blizzard North, has talked about the first plans for Diablo III and revealed that Blizzard actually wanted it to be an MMORPG, just like World of Warcraft.
The Diablo franchise was developed by Blizzard North many years ago and, after two very successful installments, work began on a third iteration, Diablo 3.
According to Schafer, the initial plan was to make the game an online experience, just like the team at Blizzard’s central headquarters were doing with World of Warcraft.
"When I was working at Blizzard a million years ago we were working on Diablo III and it was an MMO. We were going to do the Diablo version of World of Warcraft,” Schafer told I.Eat.Games.
Things changed and Schafer, together with core members of the developer, left to found a new studio.
“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," he said.
In regard to Schafer’s upcoming game, Torchlight II, the designer believes that an MMO based on the series could work, but it’s not something he and his team at Runic Games wants to make just yet.
“It’s still sort of in the long-range plan for us,” he said, in regards to the Torchlight MMO project. “The MMO market is changing right now and the traditional MMO is falling out of favor for a business model. “
“It falls in this category of ‘When the game ships, we’ll see what the world looks like’ kind of thing. Maybe the Torchlight series will suffice. Maybe people don’t want a different style of multiplayer Torchlight, and this is what they want. If so then we’ll just do more of this,” he added.
Even if Diablo 3 isn’t a standard MMO, the fact that it requires a permanent internet connection does make it similar to an online experience.
Torchlight II, on the other hand, doesn’t have any such requirements and will no doubt attract quite a lot of people later this summer, when it’s finally released.