Diablo II: Lord of Destruction is a point of reference for the ARPG genre and still attracts a consistent player base even nowadays. But while the series would enter a prolonged hiatus after its release, creator David Brevik has confirmed that a follow-up expansion was, indeed, in the works.
“Yes, sort of… it was only designed, never produced,” Brevik replied on Twitter when asked about Diablo 2’s second expansion. “I had a multi-page design doc going over new classes, new areas, new mechanics and story concepts. That’s as far as it got.”
“I designed it about 6-12 months before I left. This is one of the reasons it was never made. It was before the 1.10 patch (in terms of timeline).”
At the same time, Blizzard North was also working on its own version of Diablo 3 which Brevik expected would have been “very different from any Diablo.”
“We used a lot of the game-structure concepts for Marvel Heroes. I was an APRG+MMO. MMO in terms of many people playing at once, not like WoW. It was scrapped because most of BlizNo left,” he added.
Blizzard North lost a number of key members in June 2003 due, in part, to a conflict with then-owner Vivendi. Brevik went on to form Hellgate: London developer Flagship Studios.
Diablo 3 was eventually rebooted and released by Blizzard Entertainment. The inclusion of a real-money auction house and its more colorful art style disappointed a portion of the player base at launch.
By the sound of it, the upcoming Diablo 4 seems to borrow some concepts from Blizzard’s North version of the third entry in the series. We expect to hear more about the fourth entry in the series during BlizzConline.
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Yes, sort of... it was only designed, never produced. I had a multi-page design doc going over new classes, new areas, new mechanics and story concepts. That’s as far as it got. https://t.co/l8xHYOF6z5
— David Brevik (@davidbrevik) February 13, 2021
I designed it about 6-12 months before I left. This is one of the reasons it was never made. It was before the 1.10 patch (in terms of timeline). We were also working on our version of Diablo 3 at the time, plus another unannounced project. https://t.co/gxCfeyD0Ou
— David Brevik (@davidbrevik) February 14, 2021
