Jay Wilson has made the decision to part from the Diablo 3 team. Here's his official statement.
Originally Posted by Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
(Hey everyone,
I wanted all of you to be some of the first to know that I've made an important decision about my future, and how that decision will affect the future of Diablo.
I recently celebrated my seven-year anniversary working on Diablo III, and while it’s been one of the most challenging and rewarding periods of my life, I've reached a point creatively where I'm looking forward to working on something new. The powers that be at Blizzard have been gracious enough to give me that opportunity. Over the course of the next several weeks, I will be moving off of the Diablo III project and transitioning elsewhere within Blizzard. This decision was not an easy one for me, and not one I made quickly, but ultimately it’s what I feel is right.
The first thing I want to assure you all is that this will not negatively impact our ongoing support of Diablo III. The game was not made by one person, far from it, and the team that poured their passion and considerable talent into it isn’t going anywhere. We have lots of things planned for the future, and those plans will carry forward as normal. I also won't be abandoning the team, and will remain available to them during the transition period while we determine who will take over duties as game director.
To that point, you shouldn't be surprised if you see a job posting for a game director on Diablo III, as we want to make sure we explore every opportunity to find the best possible leadership for the project. We’re looking forward to finding this person and hearing what kind of fresh ideas they can bring to the table.
I'm proud of Diablo III, and despite our differences at times I will miss the community that has formed around it. I feel I have made many mistakes in managing that relationship, but my intent was always to provide a great gaming experience, and be as open and receptive as possible, while still sticking true to the vision the Diablo team has for the game.
I know some of you feel we fell short of our promise to release the game “when it’s ready.” While we're not perfect, we try to make the best decisions we can with the information and knowledge we have at the time. That doesn't mean we always make the right decisions, but if we made a mistake then I feel we've made an exceptional effort to correct it.
This is what you can always count on from Blizzard: that we will stand by our games and make every effort to continually improve them over time. We heard the feedback and suggestions from the community. For example, we agreed that Diablo III's itemization at launch was not good enough, so the team made numerous changes, including changing drop rates, re-tuning legendaries, and adding scores of new items to the game. We also agreed that the end game needed more depth, so the team added new events, and new systems like Monster Power and Paragon levels.
Our commitment to making our games as good as they can be is what has always defined Blizzard as a game studio, and that commitment never ends for us at a ship date. With your help, we'll continue to play, debate, and improve Diablo III, as we've done with every Blizzard game.
To that end, patch 1.0.7 is underway, the PTR is live, and there are many other great things brewing for Diablo in 2013. I’m leaving Diablo III in good hands, and my departure will not jeopardize the progress of the game as we continue to do what we do: listen, play, and improve.
You are the most passionate, dedicated group of gamers a designer could hope to have. I wish you all the best, and want to thank you for making this an amazing experience for me. Keep your axes sharp, your spell books handy, and that crafty devil in check.
--Jay
I wanted all of you to be some of the first to know that I've made an important decision about my future, and how that decision will affect the future of Diablo.
I recently celebrated my seven-year anniversary working on Diablo III, and while it’s been one of the most challenging and rewarding periods of my life, I've reached a point creatively where I'm looking forward to working on something new. The powers that be at Blizzard have been gracious enough to give me that opportunity. Over the course of the next several weeks, I will be moving off of the Diablo III project and transitioning elsewhere within Blizzard. This decision was not an easy one for me, and not one I made quickly, but ultimately it’s what I feel is right.
The first thing I want to assure you all is that this will not negatively impact our ongoing support of Diablo III. The game was not made by one person, far from it, and the team that poured their passion and considerable talent into it isn’t going anywhere. We have lots of things planned for the future, and those plans will carry forward as normal. I also won't be abandoning the team, and will remain available to them during the transition period while we determine who will take over duties as game director.
To that point, you shouldn't be surprised if you see a job posting for a game director on Diablo III, as we want to make sure we explore every opportunity to find the best possible leadership for the project. We’re looking forward to finding this person and hearing what kind of fresh ideas they can bring to the table.
I'm proud of Diablo III, and despite our differences at times I will miss the community that has formed around it. I feel I have made many mistakes in managing that relationship, but my intent was always to provide a great gaming experience, and be as open and receptive as possible, while still sticking true to the vision the Diablo team has for the game.
I know some of you feel we fell short of our promise to release the game “when it’s ready.” While we're not perfect, we try to make the best decisions we can with the information and knowledge we have at the time. That doesn't mean we always make the right decisions, but if we made a mistake then I feel we've made an exceptional effort to correct it.
This is what you can always count on from Blizzard: that we will stand by our games and make every effort to continually improve them over time. We heard the feedback and suggestions from the community. For example, we agreed that Diablo III's itemization at launch was not good enough, so the team made numerous changes, including changing drop rates, re-tuning legendaries, and adding scores of new items to the game. We also agreed that the end game needed more depth, so the team added new events, and new systems like Monster Power and Paragon levels.
Our commitment to making our games as good as they can be is what has always defined Blizzard as a game studio, and that commitment never ends for us at a ship date. With your help, we'll continue to play, debate, and improve Diablo III, as we've done with every Blizzard game.
To that end, patch 1.0.7 is underway, the PTR is live, and there are many other great things brewing for Diablo in 2013. I’m leaving Diablo III in good hands, and my departure will not jeopardize the progress of the game as we continue to do what we do: listen, play, and improve.
You are the most passionate, dedicated group of gamers a designer could hope to have. I wish you all the best, and want to thank you for making this an amazing experience for me. Keep your axes sharp, your spell books handy, and that crafty devil in check.
--Jay
The guys who invented the Diablo franchise wanted it to be claymation turn-based. Blizzard bought them and said "make it real time and put actual models in it".
Do you believe these would've been the right decisions to start off the franchise with?
I don't have an opinion if any of the decisions for the original Diablo were right or wrong, but these are the facts.
http://www.diablofan...ten-sneak-peek/
I'd disagree with this.
The expectations that fans had were very much attainable, but it was a complete swing and miss because of the development team and leaders. From the very start the development team had a very off putting attitude towards their fanbase. It reminded me of whenever they were explaining their rationale behind the stat points being automatically assigned, and essentially they said, "We just don't think it's fun to do that kind of stuff." when it came to manually assigning stat points.
They always had a "We know what fun is more than you people do." attitude about them. Just about everything in the design choice for the game came from this misguided sense of self importance. They know better than the fans. They know better than the team that worked on Diablo 2. They went away from a proven formula because they thought they knew better, and it bit them in the ass.
I mean when it takes you over a year to have *any* PvP at all when it was expected near launch is inexcusable. Again, they claim because it's not fun. They've obviously been great standard bearers of fun thus far (that's sarcasm, for anyone that can't tell) and are once again telling us what is or isn't fun.
It wasn't until I played Path of Exile that I realized how much of the charm of D2 was missing from Diablo 3. Here I am playing an indie game that feels like a building block of Diablo 3 (can you imagine that game with Blizzard's resources/manpower?) This isn't a plug by any stretch of the imagination, but there are aspects from that game that literally build on what was in D2 and makes it better, and I find myself wondering why Blizzard couldn't just do something like that rather than sitting there trying to reimagine everything. Just about everything right down to the art style has just lost it's identity from Diablo 2, and it's a real shame.
Diablo 3 is a fun enough game in it's own way, but it has no staying power. It's not fun over long periods of time, and everything from the itemization, the auction house, the skill system, to the game mechanics itself are either sub par or feel off.
The four marked ones I don't really agree with or I thought they sucked in D2.
Removal of the usability og gold and magic find + a stupid cap.
Magic find/gold on gear is boring, paragon cap is better than D2.
No manual stat distribution as you are leveling up.
Never known what was so freaking great about that, it's like people saying the old wow talents were better, there's 1 or 2 optimal choices and the one with google gets it.
No funny weapons/items with special skill abilities(D2 teleport spell on a runeword comes to mind)
They added a lot of this with the legendary patch, but I guess it could be more.
Little reason to level a new char as you can change your skills at a whim.
Good? Seriously you can't have stuff like that in a modern game with a big audience, try demon's souls/dark souls on the highest difficulty.
Is this a reply to me?
I don't know about planning stages, but two of the leads on the game agreed and the whole other part of the team disagreed. Looks like if Blizz didn't take control of Condor the game would've just continued the way they started it. Condor even tried protesting over the phone with Blizz, but the decision was final and they didn't like it.
Point I'm making is not all good decisions came out of North. And by all means not all good ones were from Blizzard (likely). So far the only real successful game from ex-North employees is Torchlight (Arenanet has no North employees from what I recall). Two of the "Big Four of North" are there - the Schaefer brothers. They're doing absolutely great and kudos to them. Dave Brevik is making a Marvel MMO, after his journey in Flagship, then Ping0, then Turbine was unsuccessful and Bill Roper made Champions Online after which got hired by Disney.
The others from North that left formed Castaway and fell to bankruptcy some years later. :/
hope...
we shall see...
Whatever happened they still made Diablo 1 and 2. That's fact. Whatever disagreements that happened during development is irrelevant because the end product was so good. Jay Wilson and Diablo 3 however...
You seem to have completely missed the part where I said Blizzard made a lot of the decisions for Diablo 1 and 2. Especially after the games went heavily into development. What we're seeing now is about the same leadership (talking producers and executives here) that were on top of D1 and D2. The only people that left were the ones that wanted the turn-based style Diablo, for a game that is so popular nowadays for its action. All the other guys are still on the team - producers, game designers, level designers, sound designers, story, hell even the music is from the same guy.
The most major component of the game - the action, was introduced by the same people that are in Blizzard today. And Jay Wilson does not call all the shots. Seriously, I know it's hard to imagine a flat development team, but all decisions in Blizzard are mutually agreed upon. Even the GAH and RMAH were called upon by the same people that were head of the first 2 games. It's a financial decision to which Jay has no word, except for the implementation.
Honestly, the first thing the guys did when they were "freed" from Blizzard, by quitting themselves, was Hellgate London. Why is this so overlooked? Nothing was stopping them from creating the absolute best RPG out there. Something to blow the entire market away. What happened?
Game design is not a democracy. It's the job of a game designer to make the tough decisions for the good of the game. This is nothing new, the D3 dev team has been more open than most from the start(that's why these discussions even happened in the first place). Besides, you make it sound as if the fans were a united front clamoring for stat point distribution, but they aren't. I was happy to see stat points go, along with a number of other things from D2 like skill specs, potion chugging, etc.
yep
I partially agree. But Metzen was responsible for killing off Cain in the manner that many fans did not like. As I said, not all good decisions came by Blizz by all means. But Metzen was the one that wrote the story for D1 and D2 and it was, in my opinion, universally praised.
Some things just happen to be great and no one man is the worst or best developer responsible for it.
Oh and they weren't fired by the way, they quit. They were invited to continue working within Blizzard but were not fond of it.
Interesting.
Can't say I'm making any conclusions from it though.
The proof is in the pudding. There's a reason the game is regarded the way it is.
The only reason it was the best selling game was because people were waiting for a sequel for many years. It doesn't mean the game was good. It was only until a week (or less) after it's release that people realized this and were pissed.