1. Fans caring are the people you are discussing this issue with.
2. What doesn't matter is that Blizzard North was named Blizzard, a simple matter you are too stubborn to grasp.

Oh, they certainly could create another studio at arm's length. Rather, I find it incredibly unlikely they'd reuse the name "Blizzard North" if they did so. The vast majority of gamers are unaware that there ever was a distinction between Blizzard and Blizzard North, so it doesn't make any branding sense to revive the old name.

Trademarks can shift around, and it's sometimes difficult to make a distinction of when an entity has changed enough that it's now a completely different entity. We could be in a semantics discussion all day over that.

However, the case of Blizzard North and Blizzard main are pretty clear. Blizzard North was originally a company called Condor. It produced a handful of games before producing Diablo in 1996. It was purchased by Blizzard and rebranded into Blizzard North at the time. It went on to produce Diablo 2. After some key personnel left the stupdio, it was officially disbanded in 2005. The distinctions are pretty clear-cut between Blizzard main and Blizzard North. Heck, Blizzard North has its own Wikipedia page separate of the main Blizzard article.

Ummm I'm going to try to put this as calmly as I can...

WHO THE FUCK CARES WHAT IT'S CALLED!?!?!

Let them call it "Blizzard North Northwest and A Mile West of South Hampton Road"! Now stop this stupid bullshit bickering and let's get back to important matters; Charsi the Blacksmith, would you?

Of course I'd buy a sword from her! Most trustworthy smithy and merchant I've met.

Oh yeah. I'd like to giver her my magic mallet. I'd like to pound away on her anvil. I'd like to stroke her fire. I'd like her to bend my steel. I'd like...I'm sorry what were we talking about?

She's so good, she tweaks my "stats" ;)

Actually, pretty much all the blacksmiths have absolutely abysmal inventory. Normal-mode Charsi and Fara are the only merchants in the game that have act-appropriate equipment for sale. This means Charsi's once-off "imbue" special effect makes her the best item-creating NPC in the game by a significant margin.

Sarcasm and double entendres make not a dent with one, hmmmmm. The Dark Side strong with him it must be.

Oh, I get them. I just choose to ignore them :-P

Fair enough. Cheers. :D

This is a wonderful thread.

Here is another one: What is favourite "Logic Artists" game? Mine is "Expeditions: Conquistador", which I promise to try as soon as its price drops under $10.

They're very much not the same thing. That's like saying that the Ion Storm that developed Deus Ex is the same Ion Storm that developed Daikatana. Different teams, different buildings, effectively separate developers owned by the same people.
Diablo was basically finished by Condor before Blizzard bought them, so arguably Diablo is a Condor franchise that just ended up being owned by Blizzard. It was Condor that actually defined what Diablo was and is (the only Diablo game made by Blizzard themselves is 3).

I really hope you're being deliberately dense for trolling purposes, because otherwise it's just sad.

Not entirely true. Many of Blizzard's developers (those not in the North studio) helped BN get the game right. As their former VP said, the game was a bug-ridden disaster when he joined in.
Nope, they had a draft, that represented the franchise as a turn-based, Claymation-based action RPG game. It wasn't until Blizzard bought them that the game was switched to real-time action / hack-and-slash RPG.

So gameplay wise it was going to be like Fallout 1 and 2?