Journey from Diablo 3 Vanilla to Reaper of Souls and the Ultimate Evil Edition (for consoles)
> Josh isn't the only responsible for the changes - the entire D3 team (and even other teams) were equally important
> Contrary to popular belief, they do have Deadlines ("expected dates" for releases) - supposed to launch in November 2013 - they went to Mike Morhaime and asked for more time to "get it right"

> Team came together to define the 3 fundamental pillars of any Diablo game
(1) Focus on the Fantasy - playing epic, bigger than life heroes, fighting the forces of Hell, with the promise of Epic Loot.
(2) Endgame for Everyone - no matter how many hours you play, there's something for you to do and get > this is where Adventure mode came from.
(3) Make online matter with the Cooperative and Social experience

Huge expectation - 10 years of work, with people from Blizzard North
> Extreme hype for the game, even internally
> Events everywhere to celebrate the release
> Huge sales - the team predicted 6.66 million units sold in the first year, they got it in the first couple days
> Server meltdown at launch really hurt the game
> Reaper of Souls had a near flawless launch

Launch was the lowest point of the game for the developers - letting the playerbase down.
> Other reasons for people being upset ("road to Hell is paved with good intentions") - the team was passionate but made some mistakes
(1) Original Launch Philosophy - stuck with D2's structure and mentality
- Long item reward tail aspirations (based on 10 years of D2) .... resulted in very stingy drops!
- Players like it difficult? No, they like efficiency!
- Rarity vs Power correlation was unclear
(2) Misunderstood Player Psychology
- Why we Play - Fantasy vs Efficiency
- Where we Play - Shop, not Play
- How we Play - Flip Farming
(3) Wrong Kind of Beta Test
- Too Short
- No End Game testing
- More of a Demo than a Beta

The console "translation" (not port) was a pivotal point at finding out potentially good changes for D3V/RoS.
Auction House - was a grand experiment, with good intentions to make safe trading a reality.

Biggest Lessons learned from D3:
> Making games is a hard endeavour!
> The importance of Pillars - when things are ugly, know and rely on your "pillars"
> Know your Fears - game designers make assumptions (and bad decisions sometimes) based on their fears >> "this is not Diablo" ... "afraid of being too generous" (in item drops)
> Randomness is not necessarily Replayability - devs want people to come back, and randomness can push them away
> Remember the Fantasy
> The Teams define the Game's Success - during D3V launch, it felt like a funeral due to player feedback; and he thinks they turned that around
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