Diablo III: “No One Will Remember if the Game is Late, Only if it’s Great”

20 Jan, 2012

Well, everyone will remember if the game is late if it’s something like the train wreck Duke Nukem Forever turned out to be. However, in Diablo III‘s case, it looks like that won’t be the issue here.

Diablo III‘s Games Director Jay Wilson posted a nice long explanation in the official blog earlier today, saying that thanks to some system changes within the game, the title won’t be ready for release when they (and the gamers) wanted it to be. Aiming to originally be released within Q1 of this year, it looks like we might have to wait a couple more months, or dare we suggest, maybe even another year before Diablo III will see the light of day.

“There’s a lot of work left to be done though,” wrote Wilson of the changes the game is under-going in response to beta testing and QA bugs. “We’re constantly tuning and making balance changes; it’s a massive task…

“…we’ve been called out for messing around with systems too much, that the game is good as-is and we should just release it. I think that’s a fair argument to make, but I also think it’s incorrect. Our job isn’t just to put out a game, it’s to release the next Diablo game. No one will remember if the game is late, only if it’s great.”

We’re also a pretty unforgiving lot, so gamers will definitely remember if the game was on time but entirely broken and buggy. Kudos to Blizzard for taking their time and making sure everything is running smoothly and not just rushed out the door to meet demands.

“We want Diablo III to be the best game it can be when it launches,” Wilson continued. “To get there, we’re going to be iterating on designs we’ve had in place for a long time, making changes to systems you’ve spent a lot of time theorycrafting, and removing features you may have come to associate with the core of the experience.

“Our hope is that by embracing our iterative design process in which we question ourselves and our decisions, Diablo III won’t just live up to our expectations, but will continue to do so a decade after it’s released.”

For a full explanation of just what’s happening with Diablo III, read up on Wilson’s blog post.

Via G4TV.