GameRatty: In Crafting Diablo 3 Class, Blizzard Risking Harry Potter Comparisons Instead Of World of Warcraft Ones

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In Crafting Diablo 3 Class, Blizzard Risking Harry Potter Comparisons Instead Of World of Warcraft Ones

2008-10-13 22:01:58 by Tracey John in MTV Multiplayer

Following the controversy surrounding “Diablo III”’s Witch Doctor, fans weren’t sure what other classes to expect next.

During BlizzCon this past weekend, the company unveiled the new Wizard class, a magic caster whose powers are based on the forces of the universe and who would replace the Sorcerer/Sorceress from the previous games.

While at the event, I spoke with lead designer Jay Wilson who gave me some details on the new Wizard class, why the team chose to go in that direction, the other names they considered, and whether or not we’ll see the Sorcerer in an expansion.

“We knew that one of the classes needed to be the magical, blast-y type, but we didn’t want to rehash the Sorcerer,” Wilson told me in a closed-door meeting room at BlizzCon. “It’s the same reason for any class we choose; we really want to be able to improve upon it. And we felt like the elementalist approach has been done so much, we weren’t sure we could add a lot to it.”

The alternative was to do something a little more old school, drawing from pen-and-paper RPGs. “In [pen-and-paper RPGs], you run into magic users that do all kinds of crazy stuff,” he explained. “Like elemental is actually the least of their abilities — acid clouds from their hands, disintegration beams… we were really removed far away from [those kinds of things] so we wanted to explore a character who can do a broader array of stuff. I can’t remember a game that had a disintegrate spell! But we still wanted to have the option to pull into the bag of Sorcerer tricks so we could bring back favorite spells.”

“If we picked ‘mage,’ people would compare it to ‘WoW,’ and if we picked ‘wizard,’ people would compare it to Harry Potter.”

Wilson said he hadn’t yet heard an outcry from players whose favorite class was the Sorcerer or Sorceress, but he also knows that not everyone will be happy. Even those on the “Diablo III” team disagreed on just the name of the class. “Every class we do there’s an internal debate about it,” he admitted. “I don’t think anybody had a problem with the [class' skill set]. But there were a few people who didn’t really like the name.”

I asked if the disdain for the moniker was because it evoked images of a certain set of children’s books and movies that star a wand-toting wizard with a lightning bolt on his forehead. Wilson told me they considered “mage” as well but wanted to avoid the term because they were worried about being compared to “World of Warcraft,” which has a mage class.

“If we picked ‘Mage,’ people would compare it to ‘WoW,’ and if we picked ‘Wizard,’ people would compare it to Harry Potter,” he said of choosing a name. “If we picked ‘Sorcerer’ and we changed the [the skill set] as much as we did, I think people would be like, ‘This isn’t the Sorcerer.’ And we felt like the Harry Potter comparison was not as hurtful as the ‘WoW’ one because the ‘Diablo’ players are really sensitive to [the game] not being too much like ‘World of Warcraft’… and I like Harry Potter okay. We just wanted a name that was descriptive. We’ve got Wizard, Sorcerer, Mage — ‘Magic User’ sounds kind of stupid — so there’s only so many we can really go for.”

“‘Diablo’ players are really sensitive to [the game] not being too much like ‘World of Warcraft.’”

Though there was some internal debate on the Wizard’s name, Wilson revealed the class wasn’t as contentious as other classes. “Some of the classes that we haven’t announced are actually the bigger debates,” he said. “There was one class in particular that we had a lot of debate on, and it wasn’t because people didn’t like the idea. It was because there were other ideas that people wanted to do more.”

For now, those yearning to play the Sorcerer or the Sorceress shouldn’t hold their breath. Wilson said that he wouldn’t expect the ousted class to show up in expansions, unlike the possible Necromancer. “I think it’s harder in this case because the Wizard and the Sorcerer are much closer than the Witch Doctor and the Necromancer,” he explained. “There are some similarities [between the Witch Doctor and the Necromancer] that people can pull, but in gameplay, the classes don’t play at all like one another. Whereas the Wizard plays a lot like the Sorcerer.”

But for the most part, the “Diablo III” team tried to re-create most of the Sorcerer’s signature skills in one form or another. “For example,” Wilson offered, “there’s no fireball, but there’s arcane orb and arcane orb kind of works like a fireball.”

“Diablo” fans, does that appease you?