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!
Praise the lord, the future just got that much brighter for D3!
Let they get a project leader that has actually played D2 enough to know what the /p8 command was.
Won’t change anything about how the game is designed in the future so I don’t really care. I want to know, though, what project he is on now so I know what to avoid. I’m just sympathetic to him in one regard: it’s surely not easy to know that you’re the guy who destroyed such classic franchise as Diablo. Other than that, f*** you, Mr. Wilson.
Imho he was clearly the wrong guy for D3, because he couldn’t understand what makes up a diablo. But that doesn’t mean that he’s the wrong guy for everything. But if his name shows up in future projects, it will tell me to wait a few weeks after release before buying – just until the hype wears off and voiced opinions become honestly dialectic.
In this thread: “lol Blizzard relegated Jay Wilson to a crappy position because he FUBARed D3″
A very possible reality: Blizzard rewarded Jay Wilson for a job well done by moving his mass-market-appealing talents onto a new project where Blizzard looks to make bank.
Except not many will want to touch that new project with a 10 foot pole.
thats very right. maybe if he goes to an activision fps game, and not a blizzard game, no one will notice/care and it will be all good. but if he sticks to this type of genre, so many people will know where he went, and know to not buy that product.
Thanks jay for barbarians and health gobes!
Wow, I cannot imagine who would willingly take his job. There are many flaws with d3, but with the rmah in play, I don’t know how you can possibly fix the core issues without pissing a lot of people off.
This move also allows blizzard to wave off all of his promises to the community as Jay overstating or simply as mistakes.
“Oh Jay, he had no idea what he was talking about! This is the ‘new direction’ for d3! Everything he said is no longer relevant!”
So, I think arena pvp is going to be expansion material at the earliest
. Hope I am proved wrong, but this move can allow d3 a blank slate with a new focus.
7 years too late
*throws confetti, pops champagne*
“Fak that loser!”
Blizzard’s official response on why they technically fired Jay Wilson? :
“F*** that loser!”
Can I like this post more than once?
Now the question is, how will this affect the future of D3? They don’t have a replacement ready. They might hire a new game director instead of promoting someone from within the company.
How long is that going to take? 6-12 months? What if the new GD has new ideas, and they have to change alot of the stuff they’ve allready done for the x-pac (have they even done any work on it yet?)?
D3 x-pac… In 2 or 3 years? More? (just look at SC2).
They will have to act fast. POE wil become open for everyone soon. And at least to the D2 crowd it is much more apealing than D3. If they want to keep these people …
they can take as long as they want…. as long as they make it good. im at the point where i havent played d3 in months. i want it to be great, it CAN be great with the right direction. so whether they take 1 year, or 4 years, makes no difference to me, as long as what comes out of it is awesome once again.
I wonder if new game features will still have to pass the “Jay Wilson’s Grandma Test” or if we’ll finally get a game with some actual complexity and some exciting choices.
Sid Meier once said “A game is a series of interesting choices”. Diablo 3 might have some choices, but they certainly are not interesting! FAIL.
I hope Jay can take a step back from this experience now, and see what huge mistakes he may have been responsible for in the games design and learns from them.
Sadly, even if he does learn and improve, any game by him in the future will have the black cloud of Diablo 3 hanging around it, until such point he puts out a great game.
Yeah true, I hate the grandma steps in normal, its too painful to go through and mp X just slows the game down to a longer grind per mob pack. I also hope they fix the skills and itemisation asap, Jay’s comments only make improvements rather than fixes at the core. Wizard blizzard needs a nerf imo, or change meteor to compete better.
I wonder what the new director will be able to say and take from the comminities many suggestions, implementing them to improve Diablo 3.
The “grandma test” was derived from Diablo 2′s development team.
I believe the source for that is in one of Flux’s interviews with Max Schaefer on the subject.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3124/postmortem_blizzards_diablo_ii.php?print=1
Ahh! I didn’t know that it existed back in the Diablo 2 days!
Still though. The interview mentions that in Diablo 2 the “mom” test was used to simplify the user interface and how one interacts with the game. Making sure that was simple. I agree with that.
I feel that Jay Wilson took it one huge step too far, asking “would my grandma be confused by all these skill choices?” or “would my grandma be confused by more than 4 gem types?”
I’m all for simplifying the user interface, but removing interesting character development decisions in the sake of ‘simple’ is what makes a game boring, real quick.