Blizzard talks about Diablo’s future – definitely not an MMO

During a recent interview at BlizzCon, one of Blizzard’s Lead Content Designers Kevin Martens has mentioned while the developer had big plans for a future massive multiplayer online Diablo, the franchise is now on a totally different course. “There’s no discussion about a Diablo MMO anymore,” Martens said. “It was a really interesting idea back when we were into it, but I think Diablo has a really strong fantasy on its own. Having a thousand people playing it with you on a server doesn’t dramatically increase it. We’ve learned to love the smaller, more focused party experience of four people.”

“And some people are like, ‘Why don’t you do five?’ I mean, we could, but kinda built the game around four people in mind. So the temptation of expanding the social circle has fallen by the wayside as we learned more about what we enjoy about Diablo.” But the question still remains – what’s next for the Diablo series? Apparently, more of what people had loved about the franchise ever since its inception. “I think us honing what we have now is way more tempting than trying to rethink [the formula],” Martens added. “We’re happy with where the game is at, with the understanding that no designer is ever truly happy with a game.”

“We like the direction we’ve chosen for this. It’s way over the top. Those four people probably do as much damage as any thousand people in any MMO. They’re lords of destruction. Even if we stay in the realm of action-RPGs with randomization, there’s no shortage of things you can do with that. The future is bright. And I think not every game has to be like Diablo. After Diablo II, there was a period where a bunch of games were a lot like it, but then people decided to try different things. And Diablo III came out of that environment in that it’s both very similar and very different.”