Second Diablo 2 expansion after Lord of Destruction could have happened, D2 creator says

Original Diablo 2 creator David Brevik briefly talks about the cancelled second expansion for the beloved ARPG sequel.

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Diablo changed over the years, going from the grim dark fantasy from the first two games to the more colorful WoW-esque design of Diablo 3. But what if this design shift never happened? What kind of Diablo 3 would we have, and more importantly to the topic of this article, what kind of new Diablo 2 content would we get?

It's been widely known for a while now that Blizzard wanted to make a second expansion for Diablo 2. The expansion, which may have been called Diablo 2: Salvation, would have taken place after Lord of Destruction. In the past, D2 series creator David Brevik said this second expansion would have a new Cleric character class, but other details remain light.

Now Diablo 2's cancelled second expansion has been mentioned again by Brevik, this time in a recent interview with Path of Exile studio founder Chris Wilson. Brevik reiterates that he designed the new expansion.

Wilson interviewed Brevik to celebrate Diablo 2's recent 25th anniversary in a one-hour video, and it's a must-watch for all Diablo fans.

Brevik essentially says that Blizzard wanted to make Diablo III, so they had moved on to explore the next sequel instead of pushing the expansion. Blizzard North's second team was also working on things that weren't Diablo-related at all, so the focus was divided.

On the 25th anniversary, Blizzard actually teased that more Diablo 2 content could be on the way.

Check below for a quick transcript of what Brevik said:

(Question) Chris Wilson:

So it's completely understandable that no further expansions were made for Diablo II after Lord of Destruction.

You've mentioned you did some planning for a potential second expansion, and I'm not going to put you on the spot and ask you details about that, but given the amazing long-term popularity of Diablo II, do you see a kind of alternate potential like parallel history for the game where a series of expansions were released for many years afterwards instead of moving on to other projects?

(Answer) David Brevik:

Not really.

There's a lot of information out there about...At the time that when you release multiple expansions, that the audience size goes down with each expansion kind of thing. Y

ou sell the most of the original thing, then a little bit less on the expansion, and a little bit less on the next expansion.

I don't know if that would have really happened with Diablo II because Diablo II kind of bucked the trends in many ways. So maybe it could have existed, but we were eager to kind of move on from Diablo II and make Diablo III.

And so that really was, that more so than anything, was the big change that we wanted to make. There were ideas we had to make Diablo III kind of a new, you know, something different than Diablo II and we were eager to kind of work on that.

As well as then, we'd also at Blizzard North kind of split into two teams, and we had other product ideas that we were kind of iterating through and making demos of, and creating kind of something brand new that was not going to be Diablo-related at all.

Those two things were occupying our time. That doesn't mean that I didn't think about Diablo II, because again, I designed a Diablo II expansion, another one.

So maybe there could have been an alternate timeline.

I think that honestly, if we had stayed there, that we would have made Diablo III and there was probably a decent chance that the second team or the other team would have gone on to make another Diablo II expansion. That definitely could have been a high possibility.