Senior producer for Diablo III Steve Parker announced via Twitter that he is no longer working at Blizzard or on the game, leading many to speculate that further delays could be coming for the highly-anticipated role-playing game that was first announced in June 2008.
Parker didn't give a reason as to his departure from the company or the project but there are some worthwhile ideas floating around the net today. Some believe that despite an announcement just a few days ago about multiple system changes within the game, it is virtually ready to go and his work on the project is done. It's possible that his departure is a sign of this and he is moving on to a new project elsewhere.
Others, however, suspect that Parker was perhaps fed up with the seemingly endless delays and threw the towel in. Either scenario is plausible but we likely won't know the real reason why he left for some time, if ever. In the interim, Blizzard has posted a job listing for a new senior producer for Diablo III to fill the open position.
Game director for Diablo III Jay Wilson announced late last week that they were making several changes to the game before it would be ready for public release. While the majority of these changes are small, such as removing items and adding dedicated buttons to the UI, Wilson goes on to detail some of the changes being made to core character attributes and stats. Additionally, the team is modifying the skill and rune systems, although he wasn't ready to talk about them just yet.
Wilson concludes his post by reaffirming that there is still a lot of work left to be done, leaving eager gamers with no launch date to speak of.