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by Shizka 3737 days ago
The document says 1994 and diablo was released 31st of December 1996(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_%28video_game%29). So it was very delayed. I guess that the game underwent some huge changes to justify this delay.

Some of the changes are described in this chapter of the book "Stay Awhile and Listen": http://www.shacknews.com/article/76406/chapter-8-finale-cond.... The part I found especially interesting was how they changed it from turn-based to ARPG:

> Our company was saying, "We're going to take on this developer, Condor, and we're going to publish their game. It's called Diablo." And for a couple of months we were working on it not knowing that it was turn-based. When it came out that it was turn-based, we said, "No, that sucks."

> We actually took a vote. They said, "Raise your hand if you would buy this game if it were turn-based." I think two people raised their hands. Then they said, "Raise your hand if you would buy this game if it were real-time." Everybody raised their hands. Allen went in and called Dave Brevik and said, "Look, you've got to make this real-time."

1 comments

Don't forget the addition of Multiplayer, and integration with Battle.net. Cheating was rampant in D1, in any case.

The pitch doc also talks about ever popular roguelike trope of perma-death, it's a heavy pill to swallow for a commercial game in 1994.

Gotta run that BobaFett trainer with the anti-PK mode!