In 1996, David Brevik -- then a designer at Blizzard North -- had run into a curious problem during the development of Diablo: players were spending more time managing their inventories than battling back the minions of hell. The core draw of Diablo was that it gave players copious amounts of loot. You start with one sword that does +1 damage, soon you come across a sword that does +5 damage, and within a few minutes a player will have accumulated a pile of breastplates, helmets, and weapons. With limited inventory space, however, players would constantly need to figure out which pieces of loot were worth keeping.