Blizzard's CCO Defends Jay Wilson, Says They're Listening To Diablo 3 Community

You may or may not have heard about Jay Wilson stepping down as lead design director for Diablo III. Anyway, he has. For those not in the know, the gaming community has placed a lot of blame on Jay Wilson for Diablo III's failure. Even when announcing his departure from the game, the community still lambasted Jay in hopes that Blizzard would fire him. Well, Blizzard's Chief Creative Officer, Rob Pardo, has stepped in to defend Mr. Wilson.

In a follow-up post to Wilson's letter of departure on the Blizzard forums, Pardo expresses great sadness in the way the community reacted and treated Jay Wilson, many using the quote made famous by the man, saying “F**k that loser” with great verve. Pardo tried dousing out the flames by saying...

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.
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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.

In reply to Pardo's comments, one user going by the handle Ozzmoziz simply states...”shut down both auction houses”

I'd like to add...make an offline mode.

The decisions to move against and away from the gaming community in favor of chasing profits was done so blatantly and with great disregard to the fans, loyalists and passionate members of the interactive entertainment society that it boggled my mind how a company like Blizzard could do what they did.

However, Blizzard won't be removing the auction houses despite those features being the biggest problem to the balance of the game. And they certainly aren't going to redesign the game to run client-side. So gamers and Blizzard are at an impasse and Blizzard certainly won't budge because profits are at stake. What will result is continued moaning, groaning and whining on the forums and the fat cats in the executive office laughing all the way to the bank.

I'm not really sure why Pardo thought it necessary to defend Wilson...perhaps Jay was crying in a dark corner and needed some consoling?

Anyway, you can read the entirety of Pardo's comments over on the Battle.net forums.