Earlier this week, it was announced that Diablo 3 director Jay Wilson was leaving the game to go to work on a new Blizzard project, which seemed to set off the celebration bells at Blizzards's battle.net forums, and not in the "fare thee well kind sir" sense.
As tends to happen with folks on the 'net, things quickly escalated, or perhaps spiraled downard, into the sort of anonymous hatred commonly found. By the second page of the thread, things were already taking an ugly turn. Well, just as the internet is the den of decent and tolerant folk, so too do is it the realm of boisterous, entitled gamers with interesting targets for their aggression. Just ask Bethesda's Pete Hines. And the latter group is often quite vocal about their opinions.
It got to the point that after 100 something pages, Blizzard CEO Rob Pardo came in and put his foot down amongst all the haters. Wilson was disappointed in fans to say the least for fans' seething over Wilson's influence with the title, and tried to take blame in Wilson's place. The following is Pardo's full statement on the matter:
"This thread saddens me greatly. I know that the Battle.net forums have earned a reputation for rough justice, but I do not believe justice is being served by how people are speaking about Jay's departure from Diablo III. "I am very proud of the Diablo franchise and what the team was able to accomplish with Diablo III. As a gamer I have enjoyed the game and played for many, many nights with friends and family. I'm not, however, going to use that as an excuse. The Diablo community deserves an even better game from Blizzard and we are committed to improving it. We have a talented team in place and have no intention of stopping work on Diablo III until it is the best game in the franchise. "I'm the only person in this thread who has actually worked with Jay. I hired Jay to head up the Diablo project and had the pleasure of getting to work with him, both in building the team and designing the game. He has great design instincts and has added so much to the franchise with his feel for visceral combat, boss battles, and an unparalleled knack for making it fun to smash bad guys. I've worked with many, many designers at Blizzard and Jay is one of the best. He has a great career at Blizzard ahead of him and I guarantee that you will enjoy Jay's game designs in future Blizzard games. "If you love Diablo as much as we do, then please continue to let us know how you feel we can improve the game. If you still feel the need to dish out blame, then I would prefer you direct it at me. I was the executive producer on the project; I hired Jay and I gave him advice and direction throughout the development process. I was ultimately responsible for the game we released and take full responsibility for the quality of the result."
It seems as though Pardo's words did little to quell the storm, as at this posting, the thread is still ongoing.