This time, it is Travis Day.
After 13 years at Blizzard I’ve decided it’s time for a new adventure. This friday will be my last day with the company and while I’m not entirely certain what I’m going to do next I am excited to see what the industry has to offer.— Travis Day (@Indalamar2) July 11, 2018
Like many Blizzard designers, he got his start in the customer service department (as a game master) before moving to another position that many use to try to move up into actual game development at the company; QA analyst. There also happens to be another Travis Day who was previously with Activision (Blizzard’s parent company) before becoming a senior producer at Blizzard in 2015 (which is why there is at times confusion).
Day’s first stint as a designer began with the World of Warcraft team in 2004. In 2012 (after Diablo III had already launched), he was brought on to the Diablo III team to help fix the games legendary items (and later spent most of his time on the games itemization system).
This was his first official posting as a Diablo III game designer (in the official forums) during a time when it was rare for any member of the D3 design/development team to even engage with the community in their forums. Tangent: part of this was a result of pre-launch decisions resulting from heated discussions regarding the designers decisions as well as corporate ones resulting from the merger with Activision where there was a concerted effort to control the PR communications. Bashiok aka Micah Whipple (who wore several different hats at the time as an editor and community manager), made a long post regarding a policy that was being instituted across all Blizzard games. DiabloII.net followed this very well back in 2011. Thus there was a period of time where blue posts were primarily community managers (where they served as liaisons between the community and the development team).
Digressing, he was also fairly new to the team and at the time, it seemed like a breath of fresh air to see an actual designer with the team making a fairly long post on the official D3 forums. That ended up being short lived though as Day eventually developed a nickname; “Doctor No” for saying “no” to a lot of ideas during the development of Reapers of Souls. He was also someone who tended to give off the wrong vibes when he met people at Blizzcon (sort of like near the beginning of this clip leading all the way to his facial expression near the 17 second mark).
Besides the few anecdotal stories I’ve heard, I can’t personally say what type of personality he really had; the fact that he was with Blizzard for 13 years says he wasn’t a misfit for the companies overall corporate culture though (so the stories I have heard may have been just how individuals approached him first).
As far as his impact on Diablo III (vanilla and Reaper of Souls), I have to look at my own personal experience where while there were some good changes, the fact that the games meta and power creep with items made me play the game less and less from 2014 onwards (to where I stopped playing altogether after Blizzcon 2015), says a lot.
Repeating what I’ve mentioned many times before when this blog was dedicated primarily to D3, this title lacked experienced game designers with actual ARPG design experience. Blizzard South (Irvine’s) design chops were always primarily World of Warcraft (which even though it drew a lot of its inspiration from Diablo and Diablo II, was designed primarily by MMO veterans who were experienced raiders in MMO’s that predated WOW like Everquest; so the game utilizes far more MMO mechanics and elements in its design); Day was no exception spending 8 years learning design in WOW before transitioning to D3.
Blizzard Entertainment is obviously changing as the years go by; the fact that so many higher level executives (folks originally thought to be lifers like Rob Pardo and Chris Metzen) have left in recent years is rather telling. Way further down the chart, it’s also not surprising to see more veterans leaving. Basically, internal changes at higher levels is slowly impacting the corporate culture in subtle ways where even vets can feel that new blood is needed. As for the Diablo franchise, I’ve always maintained that the next version of the title needs designers with actual ARPG experience and needs less people crossing over from D3’s “Team 3” (preferably a full purge).
The fact that so many designers that had been associated with D3 have now pretty much left Blizzard (including Day), signals that there has been a higher level decision made to fill most of the key positions with different people. However, until a concept is publicly unveiled, it’s going to remain unclear if this is actually going to be for the better ad whether or not the vision for the franchise is going to emphasize its dungeon crawler/ARPG roots or move onto some hybrid that builds on D3’s much more MMO inspired design elements. Time again will tell.
