Diablo III fans have been waiting for any kind of PVP. They don’t care if it’s dueling, deathmatches, or anything else that Blizzard can think of. Well, today Blizzard has outlined their PVP plans for the latest in the action RPG franchise.
Blizzard originally set out to develop formal support for the type of dueling that was so popular in Diablo II. And while testers enjoyed their time in the arena, they also found that there wasn’t much reason to keep coming back. It was falling short of Blizzard’s standards. Jay Wilson, Diablo III’s. Lead Designer, explains:
“So, our core problem is that our Team Deathmatch mode doesn’t feel like a great addition to Diablo III. It’s not up to the quality that Blizzard gamers expect or that we feel you deserve, and it doesn’t really fit with our goals for the rest of the game. The question now is what are we going to do about it? First and foremost, if our original goal was to support dueling, then we’re not achieving that goal very well if we don’t actually give players a way to duel in-game. You’ve been asking us for dueling for a while, so we’re going to add it to the game soon. Dueling is currently scheduled to release with patch 1.0.7, which is set to hit sometime after the new year. (We’ll be providing details about that feature very soon, so stay tuned.)”
So formal PVP is currently gone, but dueling will be added momentarily. Yes, it’s incredibly disappointing that a feature promised at launch is now scrapped, but it’s nice that Blizzard did the opposite of rushing out an unfinished and non-optimized product.