Jay Wilson leaving Diablo III to pursue new project within Blizzard
By Tim Colwill on January 18, 2013 at 8:28 pm
Jay Wilson has been an instrumental figure in the creation of Diablo III, and now he’s set to depart — but he’ll be staying within the company to work on another, unannounced project.
“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,” said Jay on the Battle.net forums.
“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.”
In his farewell post, Wilson expresses his pride at his work on Diablo III and the community around it, and admits to making mistakes in managing his relationship with the community. “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,” he said.
“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.”
Best of luck to Jay in his new job from all of us here at games.on.net.
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“continually improve them over time”
That they do diablo 3 is significantly better than it was at launch and promises to get even better still.
I’m a little sad that Jay isn’t sticking with D3 tho unless he’s working on the D3 expansion then I’m cool with it
Now that he’s left it might improve… nah just kidding it will still suck.
Wonder what franchise he is off to kill this time…..
will be interesting to see what a new lead brings. although, I’ve been mostly happy with the post-release patches. if it keeps going this way the game could be as memorable as D2:LoD in a bit. one major thing I want is named public games ._.
it’s unfortunate people’s thoughts about him…
In many ways I hate to say this, but .. good.
“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.”
I actually threw up in my mouth a little.
why? their post release patches have been consistently great. every patch a whole bunch of issues that the PLAYERS have with the game are getting fixed.
skitzor,
So I’m getting an offline mode?? if not, then it still SUCKS balls.
seven years on diablo 3, still shit. nice work. might as head over and get to work on call of duty 17.
Such predictable bandwagonning.
Everything successful is bad, mhmm. Well done, children. Now shoo, there’s a thread about ME3′s ending over there.
or you know maybe it was really bad?
All together now:
“FUCK THAT LOOSER”
definitely a good thing to see him leave.
I wish him all the best with his upcomming work on Project ‘Mop the floors after hours’ :)
A hate to knock people but he has pretty consistently delivered less than people expected at just about every turn, I think the PVP was just the last straw. I hope this game gets a new lead that will do it justice and make some course correction because it a great game but it just doesn’t have the longevity its name should live up to. Fingers crossed.
HOORAY!!!
people think he will be working on their new IP, Titan. I’m not sure his bosses will be too mad with him, considering it was one of the largest releases of all time. however, it would be a good idea to keep him away from the public.
uh, no. after release the patches consistently delivered a whole bunch of fixes the people had been asking for.
the decision to drop the PvP they had been working on makes sense. they know what happens when they release something not ready to the public, why the fuck would they repeat the mistake?
sure seems like many of the commenters here haven’t played D3 since either release, or soon after release.
skitzor,
It appears you and I (and my friends) had different experiences with the post release patches. The game had it’s massive problems and the patches weren’t fixing things… at least for us, the patches made it worse… thus we left d3 and have never looked back. Good riddance to it. I’m glad that Jay has a chance to go ruin something else now though.
This could go either way… I agree with most of the top issues which most players (past and present) have had with the game: internet connection required/no offline mode, extremely repetitive areas/quests, storage costs/limitations etc. I hate pausing the game and coming back in 30min to see it’s kicked me out of my session.
But then I still play the game. I have it loaded as I type this (at menu screen). The Auction House has solved my bro’s and my need to hack items in Diablo 2 (grinding for gear was never something we enjoyed and the drops weren’t very good in the early versions IMHO). The revised skill system is more to my liking. I play as all 5 classes as I enjoy them all.
To me the game was an overall success… but not to the level Diablo 2 was. Now lets hope the next Game Director can at least improve on what we have now with those expansion packs.
Well shouldn’t they have a director with a good reputation to direct a franchise like this in the first place.
I’m curious to hear what your problems with the patches were, and what you are waiting for. I have a few things, but acknowledge that the patches have done a lot.