Jay Wilson steps down from Diablo 3
Posted 17 January 2013 by XanthSeven years ago 
Jay Wilson took the helm of Diablo 3 and today he is stepping down. He took to the forums to address the fans( both viriolic and adoring) and let them know first hand. From the sounds of it he will remain with Blizzard, and his job is open for everyone who thinks they could do it better(time to put up or shut up!). Jay’s goodbye and more after the bump.
Hey everyone, I wanted all of you to be some of the first to know that I’ve made an important decision about my future, and how that decision will affect the future of Diablo.
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. 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.
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.
To that point, you shouldn’t be surprised if you see a job posting for a game director on Diablo III, as we want to make sure we explore every opportunity to find the best possible leadership for the project. We’re looking forward to finding this person and hearing what kind of fresh ideas they can bring to the table.
I’m proud of Diablo III, and despite our differences at times I will miss the community that has formed around it. 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.
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. For example, we agreed that Diablo III’s itemization at launch was not good enough, so the team made numerous changes, including changing drop rates, re-tuning legendaries, and adding scores of new items to the game. We also agreed that the end game needed more depth, so the team added new events, and new systems like Monster Power and Paragon levels.
Our commitment to making our games as good as they can be is what has always defined Blizzard as a game studio, and that commitment never ends for us at a ship date. With your help, we’ll continue to play, debate, and improve Diablo III, as we’ve done with every Blizzard game.
To that end, patch 1.0.7 is underway, the PTR is live, and there are many other great things brewing for Diablo in 2013. I’m leaving Diablo III in good hands, and my departure will not jeopardize the progress of the game as we continue to do what we do: listen, play, and improve.You are the most passionate, dedicated group of gamers a designer could hope to have.
I wish you all the best, and want to thank you for making this an amazing experience for me. Keep your axes sharp, your spell books handy, and that crafty devil in check.–Jay
I wasn’t expecting this when I jumped on to twitter this afternoon but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t too surprised. We’ve seen Wyatt Cheng take the helm on the patch previews and Jay take a more silent role. Jay had a rough hand dealt to him, pleasing everyone who loved Diablo 2 fondly while creating something new. The game has matured after those early mistakes, and is developing into something I have a hard time prying away from. Love him or hate him Jay helped get Diablo 3 out there, out of whispers and hopes for a future announcement. It may not be amazing yet but it’s on it’s way. So let’s raise a glass to one of the men who made it happen, log in and kill some monsters, and wait to see who steps up to take the game to the next echelon.
What do you think of Jay stepping down? Sound off in the comments below!
They havn’t even decided who will be game director after he has left???
Sounds like like the big fire squad at Blizz is involved.
I do NOT think we will see him at any high position inside Blizz’s A-titles. Too many mistakes.
“Fack that loser!”
Wouldn’t be surprised if Wyatt isn’t the de-facto director for the time being. Those guys seemed to have worked very closely on a lot of elements of the game. At least, in the interviews I’ve seen.
Kind of shocking, but I’m honestly excited to see what some fresh blood can do for this game.
Exactly my thoughts. Wyatt seems to be the crative head there.
If Wyatt’s the lead creative guy then you probably do not want him running things. So much of Jay’s job seemed to be Bliz politics, Activision interactions, media relations (sometimes rocky, admittedly) heading up meetings and allocating resources, etc. Exactly the sort of thing all the former Bliz North guys said they wanted to move on to a smaller studio so they wouldn’t have to do anymore, and I’d imagine Jay feels much the same. He just wants to work on games and be creative and such, and not take 5000 hateful tweets a day when some new D3 feature proves controversial.
It’s kind of ironic, as many of us are skeptical about a non-gaming executive type like Bobby Kotick being in charge of Actizard, but at the same time… better him than someone who could actually spend their work time creating a game we might want to play. The skills required to Game Director and those required to game design are very different.
I’d also suspect that they’ve had someone in charge of D3X development for a while, leading a sub-team on that project, and it wasn’t Jay. Which is a tradition; Tyler Thompson was the Project Lead for D2X after working as a programmer on D2, since the D2 leads were burnt out on that project after years of crunch and were working on early version of D3 and other projects.
http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,20635/
I don’t know. From ActiBlizz’ perspective, this game was successful (sales!). I have a feeling that Jay was moved to direct their next game.
If you hope for changes for the better, then read 3rd paragraph. No hope left.
All Blizzard had to do was drop a turd in a box and slap a diablo 3 sticker on it. I wouldn’t judge the success of this game on sales. If anything all the negativity at the beginning caused sales to be slightly lower.
You want people to be playing this for years to come so they stay excited to buy all the expansions.
They did drop a turd in a box and call it Diablo 3.
At least one good thing came out of this. The knowledge of what he is capable of. So next time his name is mentioned anywhere we will stay away because we now know better.
As for internal candidates…what about Jason Regier or Wyatt Chang or someone else?
http://www.diablowiki.net/Jason_Regier
http://www.diablowiki.net/Wyatt_Chang
I think an internal person who didn’t have as much power but maybe the vision would cause less interruption that a new person from outside the team.
expansion now can be something totally different than i previously thought;
sounds interesting!
Jup, I expect a complete new design rollout, and the removal of the 4th game difficulty Inferno.
That would be a good change, but I still do not believe that will happen. Hell Difficulty should be what’s inferno now: the most challenging one!
Well, a lot people got their wish. 2013 will be an interesting year for D3.
Let’s hope some badly needed features get added to D3.
Not sure where that optimism stems from, but go ahead!
It’s a good thing to see it proven officially though, that in the long run, exclusive focus on milking the cash cows doesn’t even work for Blizzard – no matter how fancy the packaging. Skepticism is probably the order of the day in terms of a lesson learned here, but hey …
Finally, I wish Jay all the best for his future career and hope he’ll find a position where he can indulge more in actual game design rather than having to put up with corporate politics all day.
I would barely describe it as optimism. More like super cautious optimism, because, really, how much power did Jay Wilson really have? I’ve always felt that at a lumbering giant of a corporation like Activision/Blizzard, game directors are mere peons, and decisions like “make Diablo 3 a shameless cash grab” are made by the CEO, board of directors, and other senior executives.
But, things can only go up from here, IMO. How much they actually improve, that, we’re not going to know for a while.
This can make or break the game! I guess it will be ‘make’
This is good news. Good riddance.
Now revive Deckard Cain so he can ID my items.
Amen!
Too right! They’ve brought back Diablo enough bloody times, let’s get Cain back in the picture come expansion pack.
+1 to Resurrection.
Indeed; I miss that all in one mass ID-ing. Not this click every item- fest.
Or Abd Al Hazir, I don’t know where he disappeared? Probably was eaten by ACtiBlizz beast
Zombie Cain? I’m getting creepy flashbacks of Zombie Liu Kang from Mortal Kombat.
He needs a lot of words to say that Blizzard asked him to leave the Diablo 3 team because he was a big fail on that position.
I hope he will get a job what fits him better and that there will be now someone with a vision to replace Wilson. Because Wilson didn’t have a vision at all for Diablo 3.
In my speculation it was harsher than that:
Kotick: So Bill. I’ve got two options for you: You can leave the D3-project out of your own, free will for another one, where you actually know what you’re doing, or we can fire you. It’s your choice.
aehmmmm… Jay, not Bill … don’t ask me where this freudian mistake came from…
And they burn the fall-guy. Remember, he was never the one that made the big decisions, he probably wanted Diablo 3 to be a good game. But shareholder value ruined the franchise.
That´s my opinion, too.
If only he made this decision sooner…
Like 4 years ago.
Hey Xanth I like your articles and so..but Jay really did not have rought hand dealt to him. Things are bad because he ****ed up them. I mean whose idea was to have bosses drop BLUE ITEMS on FIRST KILL. What the hell? It was Jays idea and Wyatt and someone else was against it (it was in reddit q&a). Maybe you cant judge person solely on one decision but you know what, I am judging bit because
a) He did not tell us more about internal choices of the d3 team
b) this one thing is huge.
I mean what kind of retard is for bosses dropping blue items on first slaying? What the ****? Its like one of the most fundamental things in the game…oh you slain your diablo for first time..gratz here is your good rares and amybe some legendary! But no, wait. On so much advertised inferno, killing diablo is awarded by blue ****. Well done. You completed game , here is your extra **** item, cograts, Jay.
Glad he is ****ing gone.
And they are called internal choices because…?
Oh, and are not rare and legendary items supposed to be… rare?
rare like having 1000s in one gameplay session from mobs, champions, chests, corpses , other bosses(when 5 stack)
i think you must be trolling me.
You kill inferno diablo first time, you deserve a big reward..maybe something like nephalem aura, not just ****ing archievement and blue items…no big pinata loot .
Lol at rares are supposed to be rare..cause you know, killing diablo on inferno first time is kinda rare to..atleast I did it only once
Killing inferno Big D for the second time, third time, fourth time ect. is a rare event too. I’m not getting any “archievements” there neither.
it’s only rare because Act 4 sucks and nobody goes there
yes, I strongly agree with you on that 1st drop point.
But to counter-point, I applaud the decision of no permanent skill/stat points.
Now, if they only made secondary stats be significant for all classes to making unique builds then the system will be even better.
And I still don’t like no full set bonuses on most (all?) sets.
I can live with no statpoints to sink in. But not beeing able to sink points into skills and thus having no way at all too identify myself with my characters is still my biggest issue with the game design. (The 2nd biggest would be taking out Rogue to put in Zelda, followed by itemization, followed by *tadaa* online only…)
Good luck on future endeavors.
Kinda makes me sad how hostile people are towards him tho.
hope you are trolling
I leave that for reddit and 4chan.