Diablo 3 Director Jay Wilson Stepping Down
Diablo 3's game director is stepping down and moving on to other Blizzard projects.
Diablo III director Jay Wilson announced recently that he's decided to step down from the job, after leading development on the game for seven years running. Make no mistake, Wilson isn't leaving Blizzard. He's just moving away from the Diablo project to work on something else.
Wilson has been at the center of some controversy surrounding the game. Diablo III's reception has been controversial due to technical and gameplay issues along with the slow addition of the beloved PvP mode. During the summer, Wilson came under fire for allegedly remarking "f*** that loser" in regards to comments that David Brevik, one of the co-founders of Blizzard North and creators of the series, made about Diablo III.
Wilson made his farewell announcement via the Battle.net forums, assuring fans that the move wouldn't impact game development. "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," he wrote.
As expected, he was diplomatic about the game's reception. "I'm proud of Diablo III, and despite our differences at times I will miss the community that has formed around it," he stated. "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."
With Diablo III's release a little over a year past, Wilson's replacement's task will be to keep current Diablo III players interested in the game while attracting new players. This is no easy feat, considering that Diablo III's principally shaped to be a single player, non-PvP game. With PvP launching with Patch 1.0.7, there's relatively little content that can still be added to the game to re-energize players and player numbers.
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CatfishRes TH, you may as well stick with benchmarks and best __ for the money if you're going to be this late with news.Reply -
memadmax "we fell short of our promise to release the game "when it's ready.""Reply
Dude... you guys had 7 years, and I'm willing to wager a boatload of cash to develop a top notch game.... -
dimar I hope he doesn't screw up Warcraft 4. It must be perfect in any possible and impossible way!Reply -
audi911 I guess it's only normal to step down from the Diablo franchise after the monumental fail he created.Reply
I guess his plan is to go butcher and ruin another game.
Maybe he has his eyes set on making the next Star Craft and burning that game to the ground too.
He couldn't take the heat anymore and realized how bad the game was. He is leaving now before more dirt hits the fan.
Shame on him for taking a legendary franchise and having it associated with that 7 year old failure. -
jhansonxi steve360Fuck that loser.Whoever replaces JW needs to have their head screwed on correctly.I'm not going to rush to blame him for everything since there's no way to tell how many of the problems were caused by decisions made by his superiors.Reply -
zander1983 CatfishResTH, you may as well stick with benchmarks and best __ for the money if you're going to be this late with news.Reply
This is the first time I hear about this so I have no idea why the rage. It might be a day later than other sites but so what... -
SirGCal They had years, and they didn't listen to even their closed or open beta testers in the earlier process... Pretty much a hard fail any way you cut it.Reply