This week we’ve sat down with Diablo 3 game director Jay Wilson to discuss everything Diablo 3 and Diablo in general. He also shared what he thinks were two key Diablo 3 mistakes.
In the chat with Jay he opened up on numerous topics, including some of the things that Jay thought could have been done better. Jay highlighted two specific areas where he thinks they got wrong prior to release. He said:
“We made a couple of mistakes. Number one, we were worried about revealing our story so we did not do a full beta test. That was a mistake. Screw the story. We should have done a full beta test. The late game, the itemsation, the tunings, all those things. That is the point of a beta test and we failed that point. I could have changed that direction. I bought into this ‘I want to keep all our spoilers to ourselves, and I think that was a mistake.
“The other mistake was there was a specific feature for legendaries that would allow us basically put abilities on legendaries which would allow us to do things like, occasionally a treasure goblin would spawn. A lot of the crazy legendaries we made after shipping, we ustilised that feature but we could not put that feature into the game before we shipped. I should have predicted that we needed it in year one and asked for it as part of the itemisation but we missed it and then when we realised we needed it, it was too late.
“About 18 months out at Blizzard, you make a decision about your ship date, and come hell or high water it’s probably not going to move. So, you do the best you can.”
I think we can all agree that the Diablo 3 beta was, should I say, lackluster, and more of a demo than anything else. There were a few Diablo 3 mistakes but you can hear more about the game’s development directly from Jay shortly.
Update: Episode 10 with the full Jay Wilson interview is now available to watch or listen to.