Game Director for unannounced project related to Diablo

Software Engineer, Graphics

Animator, Unannounced Project

Senior Animator, Unannounced Project

Senior Character Artist, Unannounced Project

Senior Concept Artist, Unannounced Project

Senior VFX Artist, Unannounced Project

And there is much speculation that this means it is related to Diablo IV versus another Diablo III expansion.  Whichever way, the premise of this entire blog ended up devolving into the overall poor design decisions made by the Diablo III team which has resulted in a core game design that can never really be fixed without a complete reboot and without a totally new team of lead/senior game designers (and those positions aren’t part of the above list).

Over the past few months, several departures have occurred with the team.   Two cannot really be looked too deep into; Don Vu and John Yang who both moved to the WoW team.  There was also the complete departures from Blizzard by Leonard Boyarsky (lead world designer) in April and Brian Kindregan (lead writer) in June.

The core of the games issues though lies in its actual systems which includes philosophical ideals of having this desire to control every single facet of character development and progression.  And that requires a wholesale change of the senior lead designer (Kevin Martens) and senior technical game designers (Wyatt Cheng); both which are noticeably absent from the above list of positions being advertised.  If either of these two continue to remain as decision makers, my interest in the franchise will remain the way it currently is right now; rock bottom.

The game can have the most advanced graphics and mind blowing combat, but if it backed by the same handholding and “we will define the way we want you to play” style of design philosophy, then whatever this project is will suffer from the same core design problems that Diablo III has had since launch as well as with Reaper of Souls.

Update: it has also been confirmed that Josh Mosquiera has stepped down as director and has also left Blizzard.

http://www.polygon.com/2016/7/1/12083496/unannounced-diablo-4-blizzard-hiring-new-game-director

One has to read between all the PR speak with all of these departures or re-assignments from the Diablo III team.  I would say that someone higher up has conceded that the current game is really beyond fixing (to where another expansion no longer makes sense).  What remains to be seen is if that eventually does translate into a full “cleaning of the house” once the decision is made to put Diablo III into maintenance mode (which behind the scenes, it seems to already be).