David Brevik, the original mind behind Diablo and Diablo 2, revealed in a recent interview that he wanted to make Diablo 3 an MMO.
MassivelyOP spotted an interview Brevik had with Kevin Pereira on the Pointless podcast that you can check out below.
At around the 31 minute mark, Brevik and Pereira talk about Diablo 3 and what was originally intentioned for the popular hack-and-slash, isometric RPG from Blizzard.
According to Brevik, the game was going to be an MMO with thousands of players, very similar to Marvel Heroes, the game he's currently working on with Gazillion Entertainment. Brevik was a big fan of Marvel Ultimate Alliance, the popular multiplayer games that Activision published for the sixth and seventh generation home consoles. He wanted to take that experience and evolve it for the MMO crowd with Diablo 3... but things didn't quite work out that way.
Brevik and a lot of the Blizzard North team departed where he joined up with Flagship Studios for a while and worked on the interesting but ultimately doomed Hellgate London. It had a cool concept but bugs, lack of polish and many other setbacks really hampered the game's potential for success. Brevik then took his expertise to Turbine but eventually settled at Gazillion Entertainment when he found out they had landed the Marvel license, and that's how Marvel Heroes came about.
Brevik stated in the interview that had he stayed on at Blizzard, Diablo 3 would have turned out pretty much like Marvel Heroes instead of the initial half-breed that launched back in 2012.
Many of you now know Diablo 3 now as a really good game after various patches and upgrades that altered it from its initial outing to something more palatable to the general gaming audience and the hardcore fans alike.
However, Some of you may remember that the game received a lot of negative feedback regarding the auction houses and always-on DRM. The always-on DRM would make more sense now if it was supposed to be an MMO. However, the game ended up being a four-player hack-and-slash, loot-and-grind RPG, rendering the whole DRM aspect an element of overkill. On the home consoles, Diablo 3 no longer has the always-on DRM elements present but sadly PC gamers still have to put up with it.
As for David Brevik, he's still working with Marvel Heroes and managed to gain a bit of traction with the game following the former game director of Diablo 3, Jay Wilson's infamous comment about David Brevik, where he told the rest of the Diablo 3 team “fuck that loser”.
