Diablo III Producer Departs

[Nujui]

As the new upcoming game Diablo III is nearing it's final stages, senior producer, Steve Parker, has decided to leave the project and Blizzard altogether. In his twitter post he said "Hey Twitter, I'm no longer working at Blizzard or on D3. I've had a great 5 years there and those guys are going to do an amazing job with Diablo."

His reasons for leaving are unknown at this point in time.

Source
Twitter Post

 

[xephos]

This better not be an excuse to push it back more.

 

[Gahars]

After all the mystery surrounding the release date, along with the news that Blizzard was still tweaking some of the basic mechanics of the game, this is certainly not an encouraging sign.

 

[xephos]

Why must they do this with all their games...Starcraft 2?

 

[gamerjr]

Why must they do this with all their games...Starcraft 2?

Because they make the best PC games ever! Favorite company (activision doesn't exist btw :-p )

 

[DSGamer64]

The future of Blizzard as a developer is becoming highly questionable. Their development ethics have been put into question by fans far too much over the last couple of years and they have been losing subscriptions to World of WarCraft like mad, they have lost almost 2 million players in the last three financial quarters, and probably even more this quarter when their next earnings conference call comes up early next month. Right now it's not looking good for Blizzard overall, they are taking forever with the StarCraft II expansions and have no planned release date for Diablo III despite being in beta for over 6 months now.

 

[Hells Malice]

The future of Blizzard as a developer is becoming highly questionable. Their development ethics have been put into question by fans far too much over the last couple of years and they have been losing subscriptions to World of WarCraft like mad, they have lost almost 2 million players in the last three financial quarters, and probably even more this quarter when their next earnings conference call comes up early next month. Right now it's not looking good for Blizzard overall, they are taking forever with the StarCraft II expansions and have no planned release date for Diablo III despite being in beta for over 6 months now.

Well their biggest problem, in regards to WoW, is just severe balancing issues, and the fact World of Warcraft is an archaic MMO (and very much feels like it). But otherwise, yeah, they are absolutely terrible about actually getting things done. It seems like they're too busy counting their money or swimming in it to actually DO anything.

 

[Gahars]

The future of Blizzard as a developer is becoming highly questionable. Their development ethics have been put into question by fans far too much over the last couple of years and they have been losing subscriptions to World of WarCraft like mad, they have lost almost 2 million players in the last three financial quarters, and probably even more this quarter when their next earnings conference call comes up early next month. Right now it's not looking good for Blizzard overall, they are taking forever with the StarCraft II expansions and have no planned release date for Diablo III despite being in beta for over 6 months now.

Well their biggest problem, in regards to WoW, is just severe balancing issues, and the fact World of Warcraft is an archaic MMO (and very much feels like it). But otherwise, yeah, they are absolutely terrible about actually getting things done. It seems like they're too busy counting their money or swimming in it to actually DO anything.

*Cough*

Seriously, they should meet up some day. It seems that they have quite a bit in common.

 

[GundamXXX]

The difference between Valve and Blizzard is that Valve doesnt announce things and then delay it forever like Blizzard

Also Gabe = God so he can do whatever the fuck he wants

 

[FAST6191]

the news that Blizzard was still tweaking some of the basic mechanics of the game

Although I am adopting a wait and see approach with diablo 3 I will have to ponder if it is that bad- I imagine loot drop rate and character movement speed/timings are basic mechanics yet having them still tweaked could be a good thing.

 

[Foxi4]

That, or Diablo ]I[ will just turn out to be Vaporware for 13 years like Duke Nukem Forever.

 

[Rydian]

Nah I don't think Blizzard's that bad.

 

[DSGamer64]

The future of Blizzard as a developer is becoming highly questionable. Their development ethics have been put into question by fans far too much over the last couple of years and they have been losing subscriptions to World of WarCraft like mad, they have lost almost 2 million players in the last three financial quarters, and probably even more this quarter when their next earnings conference call comes up early next month. Right now it's not looking good for Blizzard overall, they are taking forever with the StarCraft II expansions and have no planned release date for Diablo III despite being in beta for over 6 months now.

Well their biggest problem, in regards to WoW, is just severe balancing issues, and the fact World of Warcraft is an archaic MMO (and very much feels like it). But otherwise, yeah, they are absolutely terrible about actually getting things done. It seems like they're too busy counting their money or swimming in it to actually DO anything.

No, the things killing World of WarCraft are shitty development decisions. They keep revamping everything with each expansion, talent systems, class mechanics (moonkin druids and paladins anyone?), PvE content difficulty and not really adding anything new and interesting to the game. Cataclysm pretty much trashed everything that was great about class designing in WoW and Pandaland is just going to make it worse and it's more a blatant display of laziness rather then trying to simplify the game for the casuals.

The developers who work on the game really don't know what fans want, and they can't think of ways to make the game more dynamic and exciting. Having played Rift myself, I wish there were some things that WoW had that Rift has, such as full scale player versus environment events happening at any time. They took away epic quest chains in WoW, got rid of all the world bosses and killed world PvP (lol can't even raid Tarren Mill or Southshore anymore due to level 85 guards in Tarren MIll and no Alliance town in Southshore), not to mention their "world PvP" now is just a bloated battleground that you have to queue for and is limited in player participation due to faction balancing.

It's unfortunate that the only games remaining consistent by Blizzard are StarCraft II and hopefully Diablo III, once they can no longer milk the cash cow that is WoW (and odds are they are nearing their last expansion), they are going to need to come up with new games in order to fill the void.