Blizzard : The epitome of class.

[wyrmbreaker]

That's the thing. His comment was not alright in the current state of things. Maybe in about 20 or 30 years when people aren't such moral hypocrites, but it doesn't take a genius to see that he realized he made a mistake that reflected poorly on his public image.

You are also inclined to side with Brevik's remarks because the game was lacking in many areas, so much so that it's impossible for you to consider how his comments could come off as condescending. But that's what you see. Yet, if you looked at the Facebook comments, pretty much every single current developer agreed with Jay. That suggests to me that there's probably some tension at play, and that there's more to the story than what we know.

It is not a simple thing to say that Brevik's remarks were completely constructive. Viewed from a different perspective, it could come off as underhanded and hugely condescending. The thing is, none of us truly understand the the politics at play right now. It's so easy to pick a side when it resonates with your beliefs, but let's not be unreasonable here.

Jay!?!?!? what have they done to you bro, you talk like a woman with a politically objective view! this is not you.

[Deckard Cain]

That's the thing. His comment was not alright in the current state of things. Maybe in about 20 or 30 years when people aren't such moral hypocrites, but it doesn't take a genius to see that he realized he made a mistake that reflected poorly on his public image.

You are also inclined to side with Brevik's remarks because the game was lacking in many areas, so much so that it's impossible for you to consider how his comments could come off as condescending. But that's what you see. Yet, if you looked at the Facebook comments, pretty much every single current developer agreed with Jay. That suggests to me that there's probably some tension at play, and that there's more to the story than what we know.

It is not a simple thing to say that Brevik's remarks were completely constructive. Viewed from a different perspective, it could come off as underhanded and hugely condescending. The thing is, none of us truly understand the the politics at play right now. It's so easy to pick a side when it resonates with your beliefs, but let's not be unreasonable here.

I realize that Brevik made negative comments, and I have been criticized much in my life. What do I not do? Jump on facebook and say "**** that guy for criticizing me." MOST of his comments were constructive, and reiterated what a majority of the community has been saying IE - blue weapons are better than yellows, or other itemization issues. Hence, blizzard is already trying to fix those things. Though I do see that there are some comments that could be taken the wrong way.

However, instead of acting like a grown man and saying something such as 'well he can think what he wants, we did a fine job' or 'we made a great game' or 'i don't care what he thinks' etc, they acted like teenagers... the whole lot of them.

I'm not siding with Brevik's remarks, as much as I am siding with the way he said them. He DIDN"T say, those ****ing idiots ****ed the game up or anything like that. Brevik DIPLOMATICALLY said 'i would have done it differently.'

Please tell me you can at least understand the difference between what Brevik said, and the comments such as "well he made hellgate london" and "**** that loser." Blizzard made cheap personal shots at the man. It should be embarrassing for them to have said what they did. As adults they should know how to react to such comments, I don't care what behind the scenes politics are going on. Even if it was condescending, it can't be argued that the D3 team was largely inexperienced in ARPG's compared to blizzard north. Even if it is a huge insult, act like an adult.

[TheDestructor]

http://i.imgur.com/y3CsB.png

It seems Blizzard uses the same tactics as Apple and other U.S. companies to diss people/other products with fake forum accounts. Difference is that they are doing itself, not by hiring outside people.

Still, Leroy makes a good point. =/

[Simfish]

I realize that Brevik made negative comments, and I have been criticized much in my life. What do I not do? Jump on facebook and say "**** that guy for criticizing me." MOST of his comments were constructive, and reiterated what a majority of the community has been saying IE - blue weapons are better than yellows, or other itemization issues. Hence, blizzard is already trying to fix those things. Though I do see that there are some comments that could be taken the wrong way.

However, instead of acting like a grown man and saying something such as 'well he can think what he wants, we did a fine job' or 'we made a great game' or 'i don't care what he thinks' etc, they acted like teenagers... the whole lot of them.

I'm not siding with Brevik's remarks, as much as I am siding with the way he said them. He DIDN"T say, those ****ing idiots ****ed the game up or anything like that. Brevik DIPLOMATICALLY said 'i would have done it differently.'

Please tell me you can at least understand the difference between what Brevik said, and the comments such as "well he made hellgate london" and "**** that loser." Blizzard made cheap personal shots at the man. It should be embarrassing for them to have said what they did. As adults they should know how to react to such comments, I don't care what behind the scenes politics are going on. Even if it was condescending, it can't be argued that the D3 team was largely inexperienced in ARPG's compared to blizzard north. Even if it is a huge insult, act like an adult.

I am not condoning what the current developers said at all, and it's quite clear that what Jay said will be taken much worse than what Brevik said. I'm just trying to add some perspective to the situation, because for every Jay Wilson that we see, there are probably numerous folks who just simply haven't been caught yet. In this day and age, most people fully embrace social media, and the whole fiasco is intriguing to me because I can't understand why people would place so much faith in Twitter and Facebook to be acceptable outlets for socializing. I myself am probably one of those rare breeds without a Facebook or Twitter account. I quit Facebook years ago when I started to see the downside, and I have never started a Twitter account. In terms of online participation, I only participate on the reddit subreddits that actually promote good discussion, most certainly not the gaming community subreddits, and a website called Quora in which nobody actually takes you seriously if you present yourself in the way Jay Wilson did.

I think Jay Wilson was absolutely irresponsible in posting that comment. But there are two sides to the story, and it's easy to forget about the other when it's so easy to conveniently identify with Brevik's point of view. The upshot is that the posts by the Blizzard developers were meant to be private, and I don't think that is really disputable. And it was through an intrusion of privacy that the truth came to light. Superficially, what Jay said was not that bad compared to what you see on certain subreddits on a daily basis and what people on here post from time to time before those posts get deleted. But just because Jay's real name was attached to his comments, he gets all the criticism as opposed to other cowards who successfully hide behind the veil of anonymity. Haven't people ever considered that some of the top negative comments on reddit could be from competitors preying on the negative emotions of the hivemind?

I hope you understand where I'm coming from. Because it seems that people want to believe that the current Blizzard developers were the only ones not acting like adults, when that is simply not the case at all. They were the only ones that got caught. There is a difference. And I can guarantee you that there are industry professionals looking at this whole fiasco, and have learned nothing. Being in a lot of professional environments myself, I can promise you that people will behave differently when they know for sure that their thoughts will be off the record.

[beingmused]

Jay Wilson claimed the constant grind to level cap is meaningless and hence not wanted. In his own words, a level grind is "not fun". The Paragon system is the new level cap system. Of course, you argue that the Paragon system is not the same as a higher level cap, but that's, frankly, delusion on your part.

I wrote two large paragraphs two pages ago explaining why paragon levels have meaning (in that they affect MF), and yet do not keep giving you skills and combat advantage (in terms of affecting resistance and other combat formulas that take level into account), and you respond to none of that aside from snidely describing it as "delusion". Unless you can point to me a quotation where Jay Wilson says it is not fun to have additional bonus levels that grant you MF, your assertion that it runs contrary to his express beliefs is just you wanting to vilify him.

Even if he has changed course....so what? People come to realizations, that's how all games improve over time. Why are you more concerned with the predictive abilities of a game developer than you are the quality of the game itself? Did Jay Wilson run over your puppy or something?

Jay Wilson claimed that legendaries were meant to be subpar to any half decent rares or even blues. He claims that this is what's fun for the players. Now the legendaries are been updated. Oh, and weren't you one of the people claiming that the legendaries are perfectly fine as is?

Nope, I've always thought they badly dropped the ball on legendaries. It was obvious from day 1 that those were going to need to be redone. But sure, put lies in my mouth if it suits you. Screw the truth, it is much more fun to try and make people look bad!

Jay Wilson claimed that Diablo 3 is, at core, meant to be a co-op game. No one with any notion of efficiency played co-op other than to seek a free ride. The beta feedback has been that the game was co-op prohibitive. Apparently they thought otherwise until now.

No, there was nothing in the beta that was "co-op prohibitive" (except when joining someone on the same quest was buggy). What was "co-op prohibitive" was the co-op difficulty scaling in Inferno, which none of us were testing in the beta. Did someone ever complain about some co-op aspect in the beta? Most assuredly, people complained about everything. But in general people thought the co-op was fine - it was surely easier to quest together than it was in D2 with all of the TP hoopla and quest locking stuff. Point to me where the large outcries over the co-op system were during the beta. Because I'm quite certain you're just trying to gather as many "we-told-you-so"s together regardless of their validity.

Remember the near pathetic argument they adopted regarding the boring itemization? Remember how you defended the itemization and claim that others are simply not being creative and patient enough to see the whole picture?

Then Jay Wilson admits they've screwed up on itemization too.

"Itemization" can mean a lot of things. If you're talking about the diversity of affixes, I've always maintained that there are more useful affixes in D3 than in D2, by a large margin. The problems with items have always been the legendaries and the weakness of 2 handers, in my view.

So really, beingmused, what are you missing? And did you enjoy cutting out the bit I've wrote about how a semi-public figure should refrain from making personal insults to others, especially when the person in question was the founder of the said series?

That's because I had no issue with that part. He shouldn't have reacted in that angry of a manner. Tell me this: why do you think it is wrong to make personal insults, but AOK to lie and misrepresent someone just to try and make them look bad? If you are calling on others to act in a decent manner, maybe you should heed that advice yourself. I'm not sure why raging against Jay Wilson seems so entertaining for you. How about you try 1.04 instead. And if that isn't enjoyable, then maybe find a more enjoyable hobby than holding some weird vendetta against a game developer.

[Steven Hazani]

Beta coop being prohibitive: A few smart people caught it then. Those same people were then surprised when it got worse though, so whatever.

Seriously, there's a Kripp video of level 1 naked characters vs SK from the beta over two weeks before release. He realized then that even the 75% HP scaling actually made things harder than soloing due to the increased coordination required, yet didn't realize until Inferno release that it only got worse.

Incidentally, it's now 75% over all difficulties, and while I originally said 75-90% would fix it, upon further reflection the lack of coordination is a factor I seriously underestimated (that and it's a moot point when just about every build except the most unparty friendly build imaginable and all of the party friendly builds got nerfed).

[Valeli]

I haven't read all 20 pages yet, but I felt like chiming in and adding my voice.

This is absolutely ridiculous. Like... unbelievably ridiculous.

Brevik's things wasn't rude - it was honest. Which is fairly rare, because companies etc do tend to go out of their way from directly criticizing one another more often than not. But that said, it was just politely his opinions put down politely. I happen to agree with his opinions on this, but that's immaterial.

Saying F that loser.... that's not honest. It's rude. And very unprofessional. I'm really quite shocked they'd do it publically. Not offended, but shocked. I just can't believe it.

I wasn't going to buy the D3 expansion anyways because I dislike the game, but this here makes me dislike the devs.

Edit: And to Nizaris, there are plenty of people here who don't curse. I'm fairly sure I haven't, although I'd stop short of saying I'm 100% positive. I've bashed D3 a ton, and said the people behind it mismanaged it horribly, but that's about it. (Your broader point that people on forums can get immature is true... but that doesn't excuse professionals - Jay Wilson and friends - from acting in a very unprofessional manner).

[beingmused]

Beta coop being prohibitive: A few smart people caught it then. Those same people were then surprised when it got worse though, so whatever.

Seriously, there's a Kripp video of level 1 naked characters vs SK from the beta over two weeks before release. He realized then that even the 75% HP scaling actually made things harder than soloing due to the increased coordination required, yet didn't realize until Inferno release that it only got worse.

Incidentally, it's now 75% over all difficulties, and while I originally said 75-90% would fix it, upon further reflection the lack of coordination is a factor I seriously underestimated (that and it's a moot point when just about every build except the most unparty friendly build imaginable and all of the party friendly builds got nerfed).

Well coordination is a bigger factor in trying to take down a boss fight (which are all about coordination) at level 1...It doesn't have all that big of an impact on normal play. Even with the original co-op scaling that the game launched with, it is easier to do co-op than solo in Normal-Hell. Only Inferno had the problem of being much less fun in a group. And that was because the forums begged to make Inferno a blistering challenge, so they pushed the difficulty envelope, and then doubled it. Otherwise the additional HP and whatnot would not have been so prohibitive in inferno co-op.

Now it is obvious that difficulty settings weren't correct at launch. But it shouldn't have been surprising that the difficulty settings weren't going to be spot on. Between the uncertainty of what kinds of builds would pop up, exactly how the AH would affect item economy, and other factors they could only speculate on before release...did anyone expect the game to launch with perfect difficulty settings?? That would have been a beyond unreasonable expectation. I think it was much, much better that they overshot on difficulty rather than under. It is way worse to make something too easy at launch, have everyone ROFLstomp through it, and then go back and make difficult the things that everyone has already easily cleared.

[Steven Hazani]

The coop problem they were having was with the trash mobs, focusing on the same one and kiting all in the same direction etc. The SK himself, being rather predictable was less of the problem.

[Sarcyan]

That's the thing. His comment was not alright in the current state of things. Maybe in about 20 or 30 years when people aren't such moral hypocrites, but it doesn't take a genius to see that he realized he made a mistake that reflected poorly on his public image.

You are also inclined to side with Brevik's remarks because the game was lacking in many areas, so much so that it's impossible for you to consider how his comments could come off as condescending. But that's what you see. Yet, if you looked at the Facebook comments, pretty much every single current developer agreed with Jay. That suggests to me that there's probably some tension at play, and that there's more to the story than what we know.

It is not a simple thing to say that Brevik's remarks were completely constructive. Viewed from a different perspective, it could come off as underhanded and hugely condescending. The thing is, none of us truly understand the the politics at play right now. It's so easy to pick a side when it resonates with your beliefs, but let's not be unreasonable here.

Blizzard are groping in the dark.

I certainly don't agree with most of what you say.

I am a console gamer and look at how secret the new Xbox 720 is, how PR representatives don't say a thing despite the fact we are so avid and eager to know new info about them.

While in comparison we have Blizzard commenting everything, overexposing themselves and what are they going to do and whatnot. Not to mention the drama around their Facebook comments and so on.

It's not part of my life what they do behind doors. They are human, they have children, etc etc, that I know of, and that's about it.

I think they should be secretive, surprise people with new features without telling them everything. Every single patch they created has been meant to please people, which is okay knowing that the game is so mediocre, and not a good Diablo game at all.

Even so, they are just "moving with the tide". They don't seem to know what to do themselves.

For MF they had different ideas, they made a poll, then they adopted the Kripp way of doing things, based on his Youtube comments. WTH... Seeing is believing!

I'd rather prefer if they just worked on the key features and left people alone. After all we are just the spectators and the ones who argue and should be exposed. They should focus on their work, and forget everything else.

Blizzard sucks, so trashy, and I am not interested in their games anymore.