When you start playing Diablo 3, you will quickly realize that it is sort of like World of Warcraft; it runs on the same engine too. According to Runic Games’ boss Max Schafer, it actually was intended to be a massively multiplayer game by Blizzard.

Max Shafer is now behind Torchlight 1 and 2, and has previously worked on Diablo 3 as well. He reveals that Blizzard had different design priorities and goals, which led him to leave the company and start his own studio.

“When I was working at Blizzard a million years ago we were working on Diablo 3 and it was an MMO. We were going to do the Diablo version of World of Warcraft. Blizzard obviously changed that pretty quickly, so we left to start Flagship Studios and we brought in a lot of the guys, so they rebooted with their own team,” he said in an interview with I.Eat.Games.

It looks like Torchlight 2 is doing pretty well on Steam, with pre-orders surging after the release of Diablo 3.

“We’re doing pre-sales on steam, and the day Diablo 3 release they shot up 40 percent and have stayed up. They’re bringing in lots of people into this genre, and people are becoming aware of what we’re doing through them. We’re kind of piggybacking on their marketing,” Shafer revealed.

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