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I do think that Jay Wilson is to blame for everything that has got to do with the game (art, mechanics, content, etc).

I myself work in a large software organization, and as far as I understand JW's position (game director), he is the one that steers groups of people. These groups undoubtly consist of skilled and talented people that get somewhat 'vague' assignments. Like: design a combat system, design the art concept, design the items, design the itemization, etc. In practice these groups come up with several idea's and concepts in the beginning of the process. And people like JW are there to oversee the whole picture, and more importantly, to make decisions. These decisions lead to the output of different groups coming together into the solid form of a game. When some specific parts dont have good synergy together, or are not feasible due to time of technical limitations, its the task of the game director to make decisions about what to ditch, what to improve and what to develop next.

I'm very sure that the talented people in the development team have developed enough concepts and material to make a D3 game that is a thousend times better than D2, but in the end all these idea's and concepts have to be molten together by the game director, and since that is a complex task, and very sensitive to the vision of the game director, the end result will be very different for each different game director blizzard could had used (despite having to work with the same team!). I'm also pretty sure that a lot of the suggested ideas and improvements by the community, have been offered during the development of D3 to JW as an idea by one of his developers (or maybe the idea was thought of, but never reached JW because the software group is too big), but JW decided to not use it because it didnt worked for him, he couldnt visualize it, or it didnt fitted his vision.

I think Diablo 3 is a great game. I never played D2 or D1, but when I sink more than 100 hours in a game, its a good game. End of story. No matter its history. Diablo 3 for me is also the community around it, reading forums, learning stuff about the best items, looking at sites as diablo stats and diablo progress. Its the whole experience that actually makes items interesting.

They named the orange/brown things in the game Legendary. But for me a actual Legendary item in the game is for example a Mempo with 150+ mainstat and 6 CHC. This is because I learned that this type of mempo is the best possible roll. And that fact gives it legendary status. This idea in my head works, and is created by the Diablo context and atmosphere. Because it is also very hard to achieve this kind of mempo roll, it will remain legendary because I'm not sure if I will ever own one.

But back to Jay Wilson. So I think he is responsible. I hope that he played the game himself. and I hope that he realized that ID'ing rares resulting in trash 99.9% of the time is annoying, and I hope that he realized that the implementation of crafting just does not make sense at all. These are my two main frustrations in the game, and since they are both not fixed in 8 months time. I think that JW failed to see these basic flaws. And therefore these things were not part of his vision. Personally I think that is poor, so therefore I not only think he is responsible for the flaws of Diablo 3, I also think he has had a poor vision about the game.

All the shit they have put us through this year, one would think they would give at least 100% MF.

1. The items are boring and uninteresting

If getting minor upgrades in D3 is boring why was it so effective in D2? I remember searching for ages for a slightly better Vampire Gaze. Why? Because 1% more Life Leech would make me that much stronger. I fail to see how that is any different from what we're doing in D3.

2. No character investment

D2 released several patches which completely invalidated characters. Even Path of Exile, which doesn't really have respecs, the developers have acknowledged that if they ever do something drastic that invalidates a build they'll allow a one-off respec. Rerolling toons because of patches is NOT FUN. Rerolling toons because you misclicked is NOT FUN. Replaying 1-60 is NOT FUN. The game, most specifically, is about the item hunt at max level. The journey to max level is just a small bit of the game, really, and why you'd want to turn that upside-down is beyond me.

3. No social system

Usually I'm for choices. I, too, miss 8-player games. But I really hate the "stop tellin me how to play" argument. It's so shallow and so un-intellectual. All games tell you how to play. All games have a set of rules. Would FFVII have been more enjoyable if I didn't have to pick three of the heroes to be in my party? Sure, cause I loved them all, but the game was designed for a party of three for a reason. If D3 were to have 8-player games again they'd probably have to do something to reduce the graphical lag from all the spell effects. They could do that, of course, but it's not quite so simple.

As for the rest of the "social" aspect... I never used the chat in D2. I used my friends.

4. All game aspects have been simplified/streamlined/removed

The "dumbed down" argument is, well... dumb. I don't know how often people have to point out that complexity is not necessarily a good thing. World of Warcraft had a lot of complex mechanics (and still does) at launch. Blizzard correctly realized that complexity for the sake of complexity is not a good thing. People having to do hours of research per week to stay current on how to play is not good for the community, it's not good for generating new interest, it's not good for sustaining a game. D2 was not exactly complex.

Every game in the "bullet hell" genre is brutally simple, yet still retains a large degree of difficulty. Pick up Ikaruga. You'll see a game that is stunningly simple, yet still not easy. You don't need to be doing complex calculus on-the-fly for a game to be a good game. Anyone who ascribes to that is just trying to passive-aggressively call other people baddies, nothing more.

5. The story is terrible and is shoved down your throat.

Who cares? I'd love a non-storymode mode. Again the "forced down your throat" bit really takes things away from your argument. You're purposefully using language that gets an emotive response rather than a cool-headed response. It's like talking to a politician.

6. The world is not random or open enough

They only have to do one thing to address this, really. Make the sub-zones profitable so that people hunt them down and do them.

7. The AH makes the item hunt feel pointless and boring

It was always more efficient to trade in D2 too, even if trading wasn't as efficient as the AH. The AH is a huge boon for item-sellers. Being able to sell items without having to make a public game and hoping that people will come in and not be trying to scam me is a gigantic step forward. Ultimately, even if you trade or buy on the AH the items still have to come from somwehere - someone has to find them. You speak as if the AH creates items. Killing monsters still creates items. The AH just helps proliferate said items. If everyone stopped killing monsters there wouldn't be a supply of things to sell on the AH, so try not to twist that around. The items on the AH are simply items that others have found that they don't want. It's the same items that were in D2 trade games, really.

8. The world is not as dark/gothic/mysterious

The art controversary should have begun with D2, which was drastically less-moody than D1. No one cared then, so it's frankly a bullshit argument now. If you could suffer through Act 2, in particular, of D2 without complaining about the artwork then you have absolutely no business complaining about D3. I, generally, like the D3 style of artwork. The first time I went through the Halls of Agony I really thought "wow, this Leoric guy was fucking twisted." In fact, I think that the Halls of Agony, alone, were thematically much more "Diablo" than almost anything in D2. Of course the graphics could be better, nothing is perfect, but I don't think the artwork in D3 was as far off-the-mark as some of you would really like us to believe.

9. The music is basically non-existant

I generally play most games with the sound off because of Vent/Mumble/Skype and/or MY music in the background. I wouldn't really know to comment one way or the other. I find the constant combat noise in games like WoW and D3 (swords clanging, etc.) to be very annoying which is another reason I generally play with sounds disabled.

10. The level cap

Huh? 1-60 + pLvls is plenty sufficient. If you're not pLvl 100 then you didn't reach the level cap. Given that only a small handful of players are pLvl 100 I'd say this really isn't an issue at all.

11. The drop rates are terribly out of whack breaking the slot machine effect

In D2 I also remember getting a metric fuckton of Isenhearts Breastplates from every fucking boss. Just because greens dropped doesn't mean anything. There are certainly some itemization things that Blizzard could work on (I'd support, for example, not allowing class-specific items to roll primary stats that aren't useful to that class - no str/int on 1h crossbows, no dex/str on ceremonial knives, mojos, wands, sources, no int/dex on mighty weapons, mighty belts - things like that). I'd also like to see a bit tighter roll ranges on sets and legendaries. Outside of that I'm not sure I want to see that many changes to itemization go in at once.