At First, Diablo 3 Was An MMO

According to ex-Blizzard staffer Max Schaefer, the original intent was to make Diablo 3 an MMO, and work had already begun on doing just that.

Things took a turn, though, and that’s when Schaefer and some other team members left to form Flagship Studios, forcing Blizzard to reboot with its own team. It’s one of the reasons the game took forever to launch.

“When I was working at Blizzard a million years ago we were working on Diablo 3 and it was an MMO,” Schaefer told I.Eat.Games.

“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.”

Noteworthy

Flagship Studios was founded in 2003 by the original creators of Diablo: Bill Roper, along with Max Schaefer, Erich Schaefer, and David Brevik. After the disappointing Hellgate: London, the studio collapsed in 2008, with Max and Erich Schaefer then becoming part of the team at Runic Games, developers of Torchlight and the upcoming Torchlight II, two games very similar to Diablo.

So, did Diablo 3′s huge success hurt or help Flagship Studio’s latest effort, Torchlight II? It did the latter, Schaefer confirmed.

“We’re doing pre-sales on steam, and the day Diablo 3 release they shot up 40% 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,” he added.

And about Diablo 3′s infamous error 37? Schaefer wouldn’t mind Torchlight II having one of those: “What that Error 37 really means is you have 6 million people pounding on your servers, so we want our Error 37 equivalent,” he joked.

Torchlight II isn’t out yet. The game’s set to release this summer.