The concept for Diablo was founded by Condor boss Dave Brevik, whose studio was purchased by Davidson & Associates to become a branch of Blizzard, roughly six months before Diablo was released on the 31st December 1996.
According to author Craddock, ”Brevik’s goal with Diablo was to resurrect roguelike games. In roguelikes, players received only one life. When their character died, their saved game was deleted and they were forced to start over.”
”Blizzard Entertainment rejected the idea, worrying that such a harsh death penalty would alienate players,” he related, ”Dave fought against them, but eventually agreed with their decision. Hardcore returned in D2 as an optional mode players could enable after finishing the game once.”
Hardcore became the game’s Iron Man mode, in which if the character died, that was it for that character.
Craddock also revealed some of the more bizarre designs that were considered.
”Blizzard North endeavored to switch up players’ methods of restoring health and mana in D2. They tried a number of experiments: removing potions and installing auto-regeneration, and body parts that monsters would drop instead of potions,” he noted, ”At first, players could pick up a part, like a heart, and eat it to receive health or mana. That seemed inappropriate for some characters–would the paladin, a holy warrior, really gobble up hearts?–so they tried collecting parts and transmuting them using the Horadric Cube.”
Putting entrails into the Horadric Cube never made it, and the entire situation split the team.
”The team eventually split, with some arguing in favor of the old potion system,” Craddock reported, ”This divided the office; those in favor of using body parts in some manner hung signs from their doors proclaiming their vote. Eventually, the team went back to the tried-and-true potion system, deciding that having to round up lots of parts to transform into potions slowed down the game.”
David Brevik recently had a more controversial situation when discussing Diablo III.
