Jay Wilson

For the Unique monster in Development Hell, see Jay Wilson (monster).

Jay Wilson

Jay Wilson was the lead designer of Diablo III.

Biography

Pre-Blizzard

Wilson began working in the games industry around 1996, beginning work at Q Studios, working on an FPS game called Blood. He later worked at Monolith Studios, Cavedog Entertainment, and Relic Entertainment. Apart from Relic, he mainly worked on FPS games. At Relic, he was the lead designer on both Impossible Creatures and Dawn of War, and was the design director of Company of Heroes. He worked together with Josh Mosqueira on this game. He became aware of the first Diablo game after seeing it advertised on the back cover of Warcraft II. He ended up purchasing the game soon afterwards. He played Diablo II for three to four days straight when it came out.

Career at Blizzard

Wilson joined Blizzard Entertainment in 2006. He agreed to the interview not expecting to work at Blizzard, but rather to get some information that might help his current position. He was hired, and became the lead designer of Diablo III. He described his intent as being to make a good sequel, but not to stagnate the series. He was responsible for all final decisions regarding the game.

Wilson was responsible for Diablo III's combat design and physics engine. After the game's launch, and in the midst of negative player reception, he generated controversy with a "fuck that loser" comment regarding David Brevik's commentary on the game. Wilson later appologized for his words. Threads were removed on Battle.net due to the amount of community vitriol.

Wilson worked on the development of Reaper of Souls. He remained as game director of Diablo III until 2013 when he was replaced by Josh Mosqueira. Wilson cited burnout as the reason for his departure from Team 3, as he had spent nearly a decade working on the same game. He moved to an unannounced project within the company. (it is known that Wilson worked on Titan and World of Warcraft: Legion). He resigned from Blizzard in 2016 in order to pursue a career in writing, The decision was also prompted by his family, who wanted to move back to the Pacific northwest. He has commented that in recent years, the amount of online harassment he has received has dropped, and that such vitriol was part of the reason why he left the games industry.

Trivia

This section contains facts and trivia relevant to this article.

• The Barbarian is Wilson's favorite archtype.

• According to Wyatt Cheng, Wilson is a fan of the Hulk, and Kate Beckinsale in Van Helsing. He has joked that this is related to Wilson liking the Barbarian and Demon Hunter classes.