Mike Morhaime Crafts Letter to Diablo III Fans

Mark Morhaime, president and co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment, has had a lengthy message posted for his fans on the official Diablo forums.

In the missive, Morhaime traces the company's decision-making process from pre-launch to the current date, talking about the team's preparation for the game's release and how they underestimated sales, which later led to some pretty noticeable issues. Morhaime writes,

"In response to the immediate and overwhelming demand for the game, the team worked around the clock to support all regions, increase capacity, ship additional hardware to our datacenters, and troubleshoot and fix bugs as they sprang up. While things have by and large been running smoothly for several weeks now, various game-related issues have come up that we have either already responded to or are continuing to investigate (such as the latency issue some of you are experiencing) and make adjustments for. Rather than address every subject individually, I’ll just say that even as we work to address or resolve current issues, it’s always possible that further issues will crop up. We hope that our actions in the past have demonstrated that above all else, we’re committed to delivering an awesome game experience, and we hope you’ll have faith that we will continue to keep that commitment and respond to any new or outstanding issues quickly."

Morhaime takes the time to talk about some of the design decisions that went into the sequel, including the implementation of the Real Money Auction House and the online requirement, which fans have raised concerns over. Morhaime cites the company's reasons for these decisions, including trying to offset Black Market trading via the use of the RMAH, as well as confirming that yes, the online requirement is a way to ensure copy protection, but defending it by arguing that Diablo III is a predominantly multiplayer experience facilitated by online play.

Morhaime also addresses interface and latency issues, as well as a variety of other concerns, while talking about what's in store for patch 1.0.4 and patch 1.1, a PVP update, writing that more improvements are on their way and new features for max-level players are soon to be implemented as well. Morhaime also discusses plans to fine-tune balancing issues in the game and provide improvements for more social aspects of the game, including joining games, viewing achievements and known issues regarding the auction house.

Read the rest of the post here.