Jay Wilson Rules out Diablo 3 PvP for This Year
Posted 13 December 2012 by FluxIt’s not exactly a shock at this point, but Jay Wilson used his Twitter to announce that we’re not going to get PvP in Diablo 3 this year, and that we might not even get that blog update about it.
We are not likely to post a PVP update until the end of the month. Note: that is not a promise. That’s all I’ll say about that. –JayWilson
GG Jay. “Almost a Disaster” –Will_Crets
This is why we don’t like to give dates. When you put quality before deadlines sometimes you’re estimates are wrong. –JayWilson
Let’s review the recent timeline. On November 27th Jay said we’d see the PvP blog “very soon.” A week later on December 4th he said complications had arisen and it wouldn’t be so soon. Now it’s a week later and we get this final word.
People like to bash Jay since he’s the public face of the game, but from his comments it seems clear that the delay is out of his hands. Read between the lines of his Tweets back in early December. “Some complications have risen and forced a delay …I think some players don’t understand the challenges of our job and what we face day to day…” If you read that and think, “Jay sucks and this is his fault!” I suggest that you’ve never worked with or in any kind of large corporation and have no idea of how complicated things can be.
Staracraft 2 was delayed shortly before the planned launch, rumors blamed that entirely on issues with B.net 2.0 not being ready yet, and reportedly the SC2 devs were furious but could do nothing about it. Jay might be living that now — he’s being a team player and not pointing fingers — but from his words it’s pretty clear the delays are coming from outside. Battle.net? Activision? Issues with e-sports stuff? Legal issue? International market issues?
There are a lot of possibilities, but ultimately it doesn’t matter to most players, who just want PvP and care only that we’re not getting it. Yet.
Do people expect anything less from Jay these days? He’s been nothing but a disappointment.
While Jay continues to be game director and remain silent, all fingers are going to be pointed at him, including mine. However, at the same time, I’m not blind to the fact that Jay appears to have absolutely no power.
The dumbed-down console UI for a PC game… the RMAH with an item system designed around it… were these the brainchild of Jay and his team, or marching orders passed down to Jay, which as game director and a person who wanted to keep his job, had the responsibility to implement?
D3 is most likely a train-wreck due to corporate greed. And Jay is in the unfortunate position of being the face man.
Excellent Post. I feel that Jay has a great sense of what it takes to make a good game. It’s the direction that Blizzard has recently been on since being acquired by Activision that ruined D3 … not the devs.
I think so too. Jay did Dawn of War 1 which was really good. And D3 really isn’t THAT bad. I do not like all the design decisions the D3 team has made, but i think Jay is a cool guy who gets scapegoated way too much. I am guessing he likes actiongames and is not too much into the boring stuff, like numbercrunching and theorycrafting. What is sad because that is what i think D3 is lacking (among some other stuff).
Yes, Jay was the leading RTS designer in the industry in 2006 – CoH was pretty amazing from a design standpoint.
That’s why they hired him – to lock him away and keep him from competing with the SC series. Protect the series you care about while showing contempt for the series you despise and have no hope of getting right: win-win.
“Jay is a cool guy”
“**** that loser”
no, not a cool guy at all
I think Jay Wilson is an apt summary of everything that is wrong with Blizzard these days. Absolutely full of himself, no regard for the fanbase, utterly incompetent and totally unoriginal and the definition of greedy.
Not only is he utterly useless but the tone he has been using while addressing any aspect of the player base in recent months in my opinion should have gotten him fired long ago by now.
Also for this fat idiot to be constantly giving us information that is 100% WRONG just goes to show how little he is aware of as to whats happening right under his nose at his own workplace.
Great work Jay! Keep making those puppies at work
“you’re estimates are wrong. Jay Wilson”
No biggie. At least he knows how to spell “**** that loser.” Oh, and “awesome”.
Although I admire him for his confidence. He still thinks he can put out quality work.
I have never cared about PVP in Diablo before. Then again, I’ve never beaten a Diablo game on its hardest level before. There’s no further challenges for me. I guess I NEED PVP. So come on already. I’d rather have a ****ty PVP that they improve over time, than no PVP until the “have it right.” I mean, how much time did they spend getting the game itself “right,” and then it still didn’t turn out all that well. They’ve been updating things for 7 months, and we’re getting closer, but at least we had a game to play all that time. Sorry about the rant. Didn’t realize how much anger I still had about this game. Just scrap the whole thing, start on Diablo 4, give us our stat point and skill allocation back, make legendaries be legendary, and we’ll play for a decade.
Right!? What’d they care about quality when they released in May with legendary weapons unbalanced to worthlessness?
hahahahahahahaha great news
f*ck pvp in D3 it is not needed !!!!
release more PVE content ans let pvp die !!!
Yeah I totally agree, **** pvp. Why would we want added interest in the game so that it’s community continues to grow and thrive. Why would we want to stimulate the in-game economy by both creating more demand for items, and giving more people the drive to continue farming out those legendaries and paragon levels. Why add another dimension to D3 gameplay, giving players another choice in how to spend their time playing.
What’s worst of all is that only those who enjoy pvp will benefit from the introduction of pvp to the game. Well aside from the stimulation to the community and to the economy…. And those who don’t enjoy pvp will not be positively or negatively affected at all.
PvP is totally not needed, let it die.
Did you just come, krakki?
Just because you seem satisfied with the the challenge provided by PvE (maybe your intelligence is on par with the monster AI and that’s why?), this doesn’t mean that PvP is not needed. It will be a big end-game thing that will keep many others playing.
Flux, how long are you going to keep defending this game and this idiotic dev team? They have five years to pull out a quality game and they couldn’t even fit in PVP after a crap drop system.
Do you do it because it’s your job for this site? If so, cool, you have to pay the bills but if you do it just because, this game is pathetic and it’s constant delays for nothing are even more lacking.
This game and it’s life cycle can be summed out by:
“Oh sorry, we won’t be launching the game this year.”
“Oh sorry, we know our legendaries suck.”
“Oh sorry, we know the item hunt sucks.”
“Oh sorry, we don’t have the budget to expand new content.”
“Oh sorry, we won’t be launching PVP this year.”
If you want links and sources on all those quotes and more, I’d love to dig them up.
Yea I agree, I found Flux defending the special olympian team known as the Blizzard developers to be quite surprising
Of all the major D3 fan sites, he is BY FAR the most critical, which is why he’s been blacklisted by Irvine for the past year or so.
That being said, covering D3 is his job.
What a surprise, a classless anonymous internet person.
A few posts up you call the guy a “fat idiot” and now you refer to the development team as “special olympians.”
I have written numerous things criticizing the game features and dev decisions, and I’m sure I’ll write many more. And I’m unhappy about this news as I continue to look forward to PvP. Also, I’ve never had a bad personal opinion about the D3 game devs; they seem like hard working and competent guys, though I disagree with man of their “dumbed down” design decisions.
The comments in this post are entirely about the PvP delay though, and it’s what I said; it seems pretty clear that the delay came from somewhere outside the dev team, as Jay obviously thought they were ready to talk all about it 2 weeks ago.
Whether Jay and the others still bear blame for it… sure. They said we’d have PvP a few months after release, and it would be a disaster if we didn’t get it this year. The problem, I figure, isn’t that they didn’t work enough on PvP, it’s that the initial game was so visually polished and yet poorly balanced that they had to spend May-August scrambling to fix items, add MP, add paragon levels, tweak 2/3 of the skill runes, etc.
So yeah, that sucks. Would raging about Jay eating too many hamburgers help or change anything?
Flux, I don’t blame Jay personally at or nor do I blame you for not tearing him to pieces. That being said, this game has become the laughing stock of the industry. I have about 50 friends that game and not a single one of them cares about Diablo III anymore, even though it was my single most anticipated game of all time and I’ve been gaming since 1982.
It doesn’t matter who “caused” the delay as we all know that everything about this game (besides art?) has sucked. Why would PVP be any different? Whoever is “in charge” SUCKS because everything about the game, the design, the community and the post launch support has blown. See my quotes from before. Those are all close to exact quotes from the PR team, jay or general news.
We were able to play PvP 2 years ago allready so I can’t see any problems for a delay again.
Wilson has turned around several times with his words during the beta about artisans, skillsystems, no need to go back to town and twoo weeks later you had to go back to town. So I am not sure to blame Activision for another delay and the crappy game it was at release.
They were (and maybe are) not possible to make any decision and that’s why the game was not that good and now they are still fixing the game.
The reason I come to this site is because it’s unbiased and posts about the truth of it all, and isn’t a brown-nosing fest like all the other Diablo fan sites.
I hope it stays that way.
Amen. Flux does a great job and I love his writing style.
The problem here isn’t that he was wrong about when PvP would be ready (though that isn’t good). And it’s not that PvP is taking a long time (though that isn’t good either). The real problem is that he seems unable to learn from past mistakes.
By his own admission, he shouldn’t have said that it was coming soon. So why did he? He’s like an addict. He just can’t help himself when it comes to doing dumb things and making bad decisions.
[Why are you asking me for my name and email address to post a comment? You've never done that before, and you already have it linked to my account anyway.]
if jay was a d3 item:
http://i45.tinypic.com/2iqyej7.jpg
This x 100! LOL
+3 to chins is mean.
+3 to chins i almost cried!! they should put that in game!
+1 to F that loser!
i think it should be 200% to doubling instead of 50%, than this item would be trifecta, BiS, or whatever you call it.
It is probably the only legendary designed for Diablo 3 that seems to be touched by any sense of creativity.
I lol’d. Hard.
I wanted to love this game. I keep checking news to see if anything awesome is coming. All I keep seeing is pure disappointment.
at least he has a monster called himself ingame..
Even that monster is a dissapointment. Crappy loot and easy to beat.
Fvck that troll. I dont see your quality at all. Diablo 3 1.0.5 = empty boring game, BOT-FEST! I hope you guys realize what a terrible fail is this game. No more money for you! Not even a cent.I can pay for crap only once.And that is because of name.And you crappy dev’s owe everything on someone who you call … “looser”. So dont be so arrogant the game is not succsess… as you guys think.