Blizzard North

Blizzard North was a game developer studio located in San Mateo, in Northern California that created Diablo I , Diablo II and Diablo II: Lord of Destruction.

Background

Blizzard North became part of Blizzard Entertainment after Blizzard purchased Condor Inc, the game design company created by Dave Brevik, Erich Schaefer, and Max Schaefer, the creators of Diablo I.

Blizzard North produced Diablo I, Diablo II, and Diablo II: Lord of Destruction. After the release of D2X in 2001 they continued working on two unannounced projects, one of them Diablo III.

End of Blizzard North

Delays and problems ensued, the "Big Four" (Bill Roper, plus the three company founders; David Brevik, Max Schaefer, and Erich Schaefer.) left in early 2003 to form Flagship Studios, and Blizzard North ultimately closed in summer 2005, without ever announcing, much less releasing, another game.

Almost all the remaining employees of Blizzard North were offered contracts at Blizzard Irvine, and while some took those jobs, most quit and looked for work at other game developers in the Bay Area.

Diablo III Continuity

According to various insider accounts, virtually none of the early work completed on Diablo 3 remains in the current version, which was begun almost entirely from scratch by a new team in Irvine in 2005. Bill Roper discussed this in an interview in early 2009. [1]

IncGamers.com: Blizzard North had previously been working on the third Diablo, from what I understand?

Bill Roper: There was definitely work on it up north, but whenever something switches to a different team or a different lead, they pretty much tend to scrap everything.

IncGamers.com: So everything was just thrown out, and started again?

Bill Roper: I would guess so, but I have no actual knowledge of what they did or didn't do, as that was well after we were gone. But I wouldn't be surprised – there's hardly anybody from the original team or even the Diablo 2 team that's there – so my guess would be that they thought “Great, we have this awesome thing that we're working on,” so the designers and artists there would now be able to put their visions into the Diablo universe. Nothing that I've seen looks like anything I ever did with the game, so I would imagine they got rid of the vast majority of what I did when I was there.

• Consult the Diablo III History article for much more detail about the creation of Diablo III, starting in 2000 at Blizzard North.

References

• Bill Roper Interviewed