Diablo 3 was originally intended to be an MMO, according to Runic Games’ Max Schaefer

Considering that Blizzard has made an MMO out of one of its franchises, Warcraft, naturally players assumed and probably fantasized (I know I did) that Blizzard might have considered or are considering an MMO based on either their Diablo or Starcraft franchise. While a sci-fi MMO based on Starcraft remains to be seen, it seems that at one point in time during Diablo 3’s early development stages, the game was intended to be the Diablo version of World of Warcraft.

This was revealed in an interview (via I.Eat.Games) with Runic Games’ boss, Max Schaefer who was one of the original developers behind Diablo.

“You know, 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.”

So what do you guys think? Would a Diablo MMO have been successful, and more importantly – would you have played it? I know I would.