Here

I'm sure the Official Diablo forums will break out into a spamfest..

Interesting.

So who's taking the lead now ?

PvP is nearly live which means one could argue that Diablo III 1.0.7 is what Jay Wilson committed to deliver. Since maintaining and tweaking an existing game isn't the job of a lead developer, it's a natural break to hand off to someone new. I think it's going to be a good thing for D3, but more because the game will get someone who knows they're here to maintain the game than because Jay is leaving.

Good news for Jay. Good news for Diablo 3.

very interesting...

Interesting indeed, lets hope something awesome comes from this!

Will be good to have a fresh perspective at the helm. I for one think they have had some good ideas and additions to the game with the patches they've done. As ecocd said, you could argue Jay did what he needed to do. Time for someone fresh to steer the team towards new ideas for the inevitable expansion.

And personally I've never worked on one project for more than 2 years in my professional career, I really can't imagine working 7. Jay's put in his time and no doubt this past year has been the hardest. Guy probably needs a sabbatical to be honest.

Here's how much I respect Jay Wilson.

I scanned the first 17 pages of his farewell thread and I marked all the posts that were very rude and trollish as Trolling and the mean spirited but minor stuff with Dislike. There were quite a few of both, but not as many as I feared.

People forget that Jay, the devs, the CMs are real people, human beings. It's amazing how rude people are. If some other company besides Blizzard put out this game (give it a different name) it would be heralded as a great, quality game. I took a break from the game when things got crazy at work. At the time I was still having fun but getting a little burnt out on the content. Now that I've come back I'm really enjoying it and taking aspects and nuances I missed before.

I wonder how the launch of the SC2 expansion will go. Expectations are very high there as well, and from what I've been reading it seems the pros haven't been to happy with how the beta has gone. Time will tell.

It sounds a little to me, the way I read it, that he might have kinda been pushed out of the seat. He said he's 'made alot of mistakes' and 'despite our differences'. I'm gathering that maybe some tensions forced him to leave.

The games not bad, and the patches seem to be going in the right direction, so the guys got my respect.

So will he still be a monster in "Developmental Hell"?

My guess is the "year end" numbers are in - and they're nowhere near where internal projections (requirements). I don't know if those projections were on money made off RMAH, money made from copies of the game, money made from xpac's, money made from advertising, or any combination of the above, but its pretty obvious this is a termination ~ jis project, his lead, his ass on the line and well, his ass is no longer on the line.

I'll try to keep this as civil as possible, but I have no respect for him as a developer or as a manager. He had 7 years folks - 7 fricken years - to turn out a great game, and what he turned out wasn't even a "beta" version in my opinion. No skill trees? Sorry - Diablo is all about skill trees and re-rolling new characters. Then you add in those comments he made about knowing what "fun" playing games is and that he always seemed to be "cocky" and the type of boss I would never, ever want to work for - actually the exact opposite of a boss that I try to be in my real life job of managing 48 people. Never happy to see anybody lose their job, but hopefully this will allow the title the life it truly deserves to have.

Posted by baccarat0809 at 01/18/2013 06:37 AM

but its pretty obvious this is a termination

I strongly disagree. The exact corporate speak phrases for termination are either "tender his resignation" or "explore other opportunities" particularly for a prominent employee. It also would have been an official Blizzard release and not a statement from Jay himself if it were termination.

As I stated earlier, this is a logical time for him to pass the torch, because the title Diablo 3 Lead is now a different role than the one he's had for the past 7 years. A military General plans the military campaign and an ambassador negotiates the peace treaty. They're both vital individuals to a war, but they should never be the same person.

By all accounts, they beat all sales expectations - just look at the sorry state of the server on release. They were nowhere even close to being prepared for the level of players. D3 was also one of the fastest selling games in history. While the ongoing revenues from the RMAH may not have been what they were hoping for - look at the USD/Gold price floor remaining so high for so long - there's absolutely no disputing the gross sales revenues were phenomenal. There isn't a rational business in the world that would have expected better sales.

Your assertions about the end product of the game are irrelevant to the discussion about his quality as a lead developer, because it's 100% your opinion. "Diablo is all about skill trees" would be better stated as 'Diablo was all about skill trees." Franchises that don't evolve, die (e.g. the previously-wildly successful Megaman franchise vs. the continually-wildly successful Zelda franchise).

The public comments Jay has made, however, are quite salient to the argument that he wasn't a perfect manager and are an indisputably a poor reflection on him. No manager is good at everything so you pick your priorities on the skillset required and I would put "public relations" near the bottom for a lead developer. It's a poor reflection on Blizzard for not recognizing this deficiency and forcing all communication directly from him to be closely monitored with all other statements going through a PR guy. Blame Jay for his poor PR judgment, blame Blizzard for not doing anything about it.

Good for him.

The fact that I'm still playing and I started on release day means from my point of view the game works.

The only thing I hate about the game is the no LAN/offline option, but only because I life in far away from any country with a server and have crappy latency.

Jay Wilson has done well for himself, and I think that this is overall a good thing for everyone. Thanks for the post @gnawol

@bort - I completely forgot I started playing on release day. Wow.

A no win situation and an ever tumbling trainwreck.

The most vocal posters, there and elsewhere, clearly just wanted D2 again. Others lay blame on the AH. And so on. And it goes and goes as it has and seemingly ever will.

It's an unending cycle that both participants seem entirely complicit in repeating time and time again. Blizzard says they're listening, people shout everything that they've shouted since May or the beta, and nothing substantial changes. Are there improvements? Sure. But it's never enough.

Some direct blunt honesty on both sides would be welcome now. Blizzard needs to come forward and firmly state that the game will never have the AH removed, that it will never have an offline mode, &c., and settle it squarely and directly. The people need to come to that understanding and stop voicing those same complaints as if anything about it will change. Instead, we get posts like that which sound like they're filtered through ten lawyers, and in response we have the same mouth breathers screaming for changes that will clearly never come.

It's all very exhausting, depressing, and numbing.

Rob Pardo's response was hilarious. So if we should blame you for hiring Jay then we should blame Blizzard for hiring you for hiring Jay...So ultimately with your logic we should just end up blaming Blizzard?

Yeah, no. I like the game so too bad.

Posted by ecocd at 01/18/2013 07:10 AM

Posted by baccarat0809 at 01/18/2013 06:37 AM

but its pretty obvious this is a termination

I strongly disagree. The exact corporate speak phrases for termination are either "tender his resignation" or "explore other opportunities" particularly for a prominent employee. It also would have been an official Blizzard release and not a statement from Jay himself if it were termination.

As I stated earlier, this is a logical time for him to pass the torch, because the title Diablo 3 Lead is now a different role than the one he's had for the past 7 years. A military General plans the military campaign and an ambassador negotiates the peace treaty. They're both vital individuals to a war, but they should never be the same person.

By all accounts, they beat all sales expectations - just look at the sorry state of the server on release. They were nowhere even close to being prepared for the level of players. D3 was also one of the fastest selling games in history. While the ongoing revenues from the RMAH may not have been what they were hoping for - look at the USD/Gold price floor remaining so high for so long - there's absolutely no disputing the gross sales revenues were phenomenal. There isn't a rational business in the world that would have expected better sales.

Your assertions about the end product of the game are irrelevant to the discussion about his quality as a lead developer, because it's 100% your opinion. "Diablo is all about skill trees" would be better stated as 'Diablo was all about skill trees." Franchises that don't evolve, die (e.g. the previously-wildly successful Megaman franchise vs. the continually-wildly successful Zelda franchise).

The public comments Jay has made, however, are quite salient to the argument that he wasn't a perfect manager and are an indisputably a poor reflection on him. No manager is good at everything so you pick your priorities on the skillset required and I would put "public relations" near the bottom for a lead developer. It's a poor reflection on Blizzard for not recognizing this deficiency and forcing all communication directly from him to be closely monitored with all other statements going through a PR guy. Blame Jay for his poor PR judgment, blame Blizzard for not doing anything about it.

Well, i think its time to agree to disagree, especially after reading Rob Pardo's post.

I'll agree that my thoughts about what d3 should have been is irrelevant, however if you spent any time after launch reading the forums I think you would have seen that what most people wanted really was an xpac for D2 rather than a D3 - and they didn't get it. Yes, people are more to complain than praise, but damn, it was like 100 complaints for every 2 praises. Personally I like the AH, and think its a great addition, and yes, I also recognize that there were so many third-party websites on d2 that it only made sense for bliz to get into the business themselves of selling items, but ultimately thats only part of the battle - the real "battle" is that the game doesn't feel like D3 - it feels like a whole new series - not Diablo.

I'll continue to play the game, as there really is no better out there, but D3 could have been AMAZING - and it's not, and I think Mr. Pardo knows that.

Lastly - you say that Blizz beat all sales expectations ... maybe they beat the public "guidance" expectations, but did they really hit the mark? Nobody will even know what goes on in the board room besides those few souls lucky enough to be in the meetings. I could be wrong, but I just get the feeling that this was a termination

I've seen my share of "promoted out of your position" in my days in banking. Someone screwed up but his termination may prove unsettling to line troops, regulators, or investors? Create a new position to make him a different manager's problem (a manager that will know how to fire him without making the company look bad) or create a new position that he will hate and will eventually force him to quit.

Anybody want to apply for the job? I think I found the D3 game director posting here:

http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/careers/posting.html?id=130000Y

Also, Jay has updated his twitter summary to say he is a game director for an unannounced Blizzard game (used to say Diablo 3).

https://twitter.com/Angryrobotics

I think he really just moved on to something new, guess time will tell.

Posted by Khan at 01/20/2013 01:42 PM

Rob Pardo's response was hilarious. So if we should blame you for hiring Jay then we should blame Blizzard for hiring you for hiring Jay...So ultimately with your logic we should just end up blaming Blizzard?

Yeah, no. I like the game so too bad.

Yah, I totally agree: In the end, the only person to really blame or praise would be the company Blizzard itself.

I never really followed the Blizzard forums that much & it was actually several months into the game that I found out who Jay Wilson was. But even then, I never really saw him as being someone to target criticism or praise upon, as I'm sure 99% of what he did was based on decisions made at a higher level (i.e., Rob Pardo's &/or the board of directors at Blizzard), as opposed to what he himself might have wanted to do.

A lot of the spammers & complainers do seem to be former hardcore (no pun intended) D2 players who are comparing the current game to the previous one. Fortunately for me, D2 was waaaay too long ago for me to remember much of the specific gaming mechanics, which leaves me unable & unwilling to criticize or praise the current game based on such comparisons. All I remember about D2 (besides having a lot of fun playing it) was being very very cautious with my second Amazon's skill points lest I spend it on a skill or tech tree that I would latter regret (I think I had roughly 20-something skill points that I hadn't spent yet cause I was still undetermined on which path I wanted to take...)

Game mechanics aside, my only real "complaint" with D3 is no offline mode. Honestly, it really does suck when you are sitting on a plane w/ your laptop & just want to kill demons for an hour or two while your battery lasts, but because there's no wi-fi, you can't. Or if you want to play the game on a Tuesday night cause that's when you have the most free time, but again you can't cause the Blizzard servers are down for maintenance. That being said, this negative point wasn't enough to stop me from getting the game, & I do enjoy playing D3 immensely (& probably play it more than I should..!). Just as I've enjoyed playing almost all Blizzard games in the Diablo, StarCraft, & WarCraft series.

Anyway, best of luck to Jay Wilson in his future endeavors, regardless of whether he was terminated or resigned on his own volition...