Diablo 3 Team Deathmatch Mode Cancelled, Balance Issues Cited by Blizzard

Preference to single player balance lead to the mode's demise.


Looking forward to Team Deathmatch in Blizzard Entertainment’s Diablo 3? Well, look for something else because lead game director Jay Wilson has just announced that they’re scrapping the same. “In continuing to develop this mode, playtest it, and put it in front of other developers within the company, we’ve found that it falls short of our expectations for a high-quality Blizzard experience,” stated Wilson on Diablo 3’s official website.

“Simply fighting each other with no other objectives or choices to make gets old relatively quickly. We’ve brought a lot of people in to try out Team Deathmatch and, while some found it entertaining, most of our testers didn’t feel like it was something they’d want to do beyond a few hours. Without more varied objectives, or very lucrative rewards, few saw our current iteration as something they’d want spend a lot of time in.

“Diablo III was designed to be a PvE-first kind of game, where we never compromised on player abilities in the name of future PvP balance. We want to be able to carry over as many of the crazy runes, items, and skills as possible, with their crazy effects, and alter them as little as possible. In a casual PvP mode, something equivalent to a WoW Battleground, this would be fine, but Team Deathmatch felt very hardcore, and it put a laser focus on class balance in a way that we didn’t think would be good for the game as a whole.”

So essentially, Blizzard nixed the featured due to balancing issues. Fair enough, but what else do Diablo 3 gamers have to look forward to now?

Source: GIBiz

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