Diablo was conceived by [David Brevik] during the development of the [fighting game] *[Justice League Task Force] (1995), developed by Japanese studio [Sunsoft] with two American studios, Condor Games (later [Blizzard North] on the [Sega Genesis] version and Silicon & Synapse (soon renamed [Blizzard Entertainment] on the [SNES]version.[[14]] Condor, Brevik’s studio, was initially unaware of the SNES version, but eventually became acquainted with that version’s co-developer Blizzard, who they found to have a similar interest in PC gaming. Condor’s proposal for Diablo , then a turn-based role-playing video game was turned down by other publishers on the grounds that “RPGs are dead” before Blizzard took an interest after the idea was pitched to them in January 1995.
Reviewers commonly cited the online multiplayer aspect as one of the strongest points of the game, with it being described as greatly extending its replay value.[[]
I think I actually understand…which is why I’m liking your posts. I made the same assumption one time and I actually think what I remembered was that DI was really a chat box before the StarCraft Bnet version released a couple years later.
That version, I recall, was more like Battle Net to me than the original chat and matchmaking box. That’s when we started seeing ladders and all that.
Cheating was insane until they went Blizzard client side a few years after that.
Anyway: Battle Net technically launched with Diablo…but…it was a shell and shadow of what we understand Bnet to be even 2 years later until now.
Thank you for correcting me at Gencon in 2006 random nerd guy. I had locked away the original Bnet client from existence somehow, which was literally a lean, mean IRC machine.
Cross realm battlegrounds were in classic, and unlike dungeons, it serves important purposes. Dungeons however should never have gotten a cross realm dungeon finder app. The dungeon finder is actually # 1 on my list of “things that ruined world of warcraft” (yes, higher than pandas).
You just a few posts ago said you were “9 at the time.” when you bought Diablo from Walmart.
Brevik was the guy who created Diablo. Unless an eight year old was heading development for an RPG, you’re younger than him and given that was probably his crowning moment, he remembers it very vividly. Hell he still talks about very vague specifics during the design of Diablo and Diablo 2 like barely having enough to pay his workers. Diablo 2 he says was completely rushed because they screwed off a lot of time then when they were approaching their deadline they went at a full sprint and just barely got it out before then which is why they put out so many patches to fix things they didn’t get to QA test.
No it was right there, day one. I bet you forgot. We used it all the time. It was so lean and just BAM you were hooked up in a game. It was so friggin awesome.
lol… how to tell you grew up in a REALLY small boonieville type area, vs in a city, with friends, who would sit in the same room and jam stuff together.
Brevik seems a cool dude, to me anyway. He seems chill. I don’t know how good Hellgate? (after he left Blizz…) was because I never bothered trying it but I’m sure it was fun.
I lost track of him after that. What is he doing these days anyway?
Me? I played Diablo I over BNET all the friggin time since it came out. It had zero bloat or difficulty to it at all. You didn’t need super big connections or anythingbecause it didn’t exist on a Blizzard server. Dig around if you think me lying. It literally was a Chat box which allowed dupes.
BNET was real, lol. It really really was. 197…and yeah up until '97 not so much. BNET rally was a revolution of sorts. Wth was that room called…Gamespy? There were MUDS I guess? … I was a kid lo I cant put it all togehter…old…
Because the internet was still fairly new and growing. Keep in mind the early 90s argued the internet was going to be nothing more than a glorified chat service fad that would die off swiftly.
MUDs and Battle Net showed people a very small glimpse of what was possible. Hell I think Ultima Online launched in 1997 and Meridian in 95 in a lighter sense. As far as Ultima Online goes that was a fully online game and was the birth of MMORPGs in their current inception. In fact the term “MMORPG” was coined by Richard Garriot himself when he was describing Ultima Online. I think back to that old movie “The Cable Man” where Carrey remarks at a satellite: “This is the information super highway, soon we will be shopping from our homes, a kid playing Mortal Kombat in his living room can soon be playing against another player living in Vietnam.”
Internet gaming never really took off until after Battle Net showing the viability of it, as well as really terrible internet speeds.
mate. BBMs have been a thing (and a multiplayer enviroment) for a VEEERRRRRYYY long time.
hell ever IRC channels via MiRC held some sort of text base role play for people.
p sure i was playing shandalar/ BBM titles waaaaaaay before diablo was even pitched.
heck even AoE had it’s own multiplayer feature if you looked for it.
Only about 1% of the world populace at that time would be able to use internet infrastructure for gaming. And of those, only about 0.5% of 0.5% would have the connection speed to play d1 online.
Why would blizzard develop and implement technology for that?
I know d1 had hardline lan functionality, but internet functionality? BEFORE the internet?