Gamespy has posted their own interview with Jay Wilson. This one is less a conversation about game mechanics and more a standard Q&A, with quotes from Jay about the features we’ll see in Battle.net 2.0, the state of the RPG genre, randomizing level design, D3’s planned financial model, and how D3 might handle PvP. Here are the highlights of the interview, and a quote for good measure:
- Randomness is hard and expensive, that’s why none but Blizzard truly succeeds on it. Modellers who loves to make trees are worth their weight in gold.
- Probably won’t use microtransactions as (main) payment. Probably use “box type” system. Subscription not impossible still. Use what works best for the players. Want to earn money but doesn’t want to gouge customers.
- There will be a dedicated PvP mode in Diablo III, but right now only decided that “hostile mode” and unwilling PK-ing will definitely not occur.
GameSpy: There wasn’t much content built specifically for PvP in the Diablo games. Fast forward to WoW, and you have lots of PvP-specific content. What approach to PvP are you taking with Diablo III?
Jay Wilson: We’d like there to be a dedicated PvP mode, and we’d like to move away from [how it worked in previous Diablo games] where players just enabled PvP. We don’t have any specific plans yet because we haven’t really made any active decisions. The only real PvP-oriented decision that we’ve made and announced is that we do not allow the “hostility mode” that Diablo II had where you can go into town, go hostile, pop back through a town portal, and insta-kill your friend. That just makes people not want to play the game. I know some people say, “Oh, you’re taking the teeth out of Diablo.” I understand why they feel that way, but making people not want to play together does not make for a better game. That’s our feeling.
We definitely want there to be a PvP mode for PvP players, and we would like that mode to be a really serious, skill-based, very strong [aspect of the game]. I feel that on the side of all our games, we really try to make PvP games that cater to a competitive player, first and foremost. We don’t try to dumb down or tone down our PvP games. We make [them] good, strong competitive games. StarCraft is one of the best examples. But in terms of what our actual plans are for Diablo III, we don’t have anything to specifically announce right now, mostly because we’re still messing around with a bunch of different ideas.
Remember that you can read all Diablo Interviews, Previews and Panels from the Diablo 3 Media Coverage.
