To be fair, they did the same thing with the original Starcraft...kinda. Originally people passed it off as being too heavily based on Warcraft and pleasing that crowd, and was dismissed for it's overly colourful style. Then they scrapped it and restarted, and it turned out very well for them.fundayz said:That was also pre-pre-alpha in 2005. Imagine what it would have looked like if would've had another 6(and counting) years of development and polish.Aylaine said:I prefer it the way it looks now. Those screen shots remind me of NeverWinter Nights, which makes me cringe. x.x;
The fact is that they already had a game with the classic style yet decided to scrap it the same year as WoW really started picking up, and replaced it with a much more WoW-looking Diablo.
Even though it is denied by Blizzard, this information further supports the idea that Blizzard changed the Diablo style to appeal to the WoW crowd.
This isn't a bad move company-wise, but it shows where their loyalty lies (not in their own classic franchises apparently).
Other than the style issue, it's kind of history repeating itself.