Overwatch team made an announce that they changing the name of McCree to something else. Now can we expect a similar change in Diablo 3 as well? Do Blizzard plan on what went seemingly wrong with Diablo 3 while going forward besides a few name changes?
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Doubt it, afaik they’ve only changed names directly linked to the people accused of various wrongdoings. That going forward they will not use names of employees is something else entirely.
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Good, a practice that should not have happened at all anyway.
Use of anagrams, palindromes, abbreviations and other naming pun affectations, perhaps. But not direct names.
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I am not sure what you are even saying. Are you saying there are Diablo staff, who have names in the game, who are accused of abusive behavior or crimes?
This was the statement regarding use of staff names in Overwatch.
"Going forward, in-game characters will no longer be name after real employees and we will be more thoughtful and discerning about adding real world references in future Overwatch content.”
The char name being removed is because the staff member was fired for his behavior.
I am not expecting any Diablo 3 names to change unless someone is similarly fired for cause and it reflects badly on the company. Even so, the real name references in D3 are not part of the lore or story, like they were in OW. They are easter eggs/rare mobs/item names. They play no role in highlighting or glorifying any particular person. Bonus, you get to kill the Devs if you don’t like them. You even get to kill me sometimes if a random yellow mob pulls my other MVP name from the naming list!
Diablo 4 is where you might see any policy changes, but that statement was for OW, not Diablo so who knows.
The amount of these in WoW and Diablo 3 is HUGE. Although most of the time unless you know about it, you would not realize it.
If there are any, The Development Hell (I mean, Act 1 easteregg dungeon) is full of such monsters and ofcourse credit section. Tons of people left, laid out or silently fired for their wrongdoings in the past. I shouldn’t have opened this after a long trip but here we are.
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Why not they did a good job with D3s Kanai’s Cube and King Kanai. In memory of Kevin Kanai Griffith a team 3 member who died from cancer. I was very happed they did that.
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Yes, as I said, we have monsters you can kill, that are rare, named after Blizz staff. Monsters. you. kill. Not heroes that are part of the lore of the game. McCree was one of the major heroes of Overwatch that players could use.
Diablo has rare monsters you can kill - as in bad guys. heh. Not that I can think of anyone on the Diablo team right now that has been cited in the lawsuit, but still, they are not portrayed in a heroic light.
With the exception of the tribute for Kevin Kanai Griffith, an artist on WoW and Diablo, who passed away from cancer. He has a positive association in the game.
Everything else is either a monster you kill or an item name, usually based off their online nicknames, not even real names.
Blizz is focusing on removing major lore names that glorify real people who are accused of doing bad things. I don’t think they are going to care if we kill Jay Wilson a few more times in an easter egg dungeon. That is low priority to remove, if they ever do.
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An exceptional situation can, and should, ignore otherwise stringent “rules.”
But, Bubba Joe Bob the Blacksmith is not needed. Nor wanted.
I don’t think Diablo has any NPCs, even fluff ones, named after staff. I think it is all limited to easter egg monster names or item names. Even then it is hard to tell because they are changed in some fashion or based on gaming nicknames.
If you kill Mirasol that is me! The yellow mobs are randomly generated. They have a two part naming scheme. The first part of the name comes off one list (“Mirasol”), the second part off another (“The Vile” for example).
What I personally have issues with is using real names for major lore characters, zones, cities, etc. That becomes problematic if someone turns out to be a milkshake duck. That is the issue in OW, and WoW too actually.
Easter eggs and altered/changed references that only those who know about get, are kind of cool.
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In a rift earlier today I found “Mirasol the Immortal”.
The second half of the name proved to be unfounded.
Sorry.
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I always laugh when I see names I recognize. If I get good loot I even send a note to them. Hope Mira dropped something useful, even if it was just mats!
Diablo 3 has way too many references to be “cool.” At least to me. Seriously, Beckon Sail, Logan’s Claw, numerous Marvel references otherwise, etc., etc.
The first couple of them I thought “OK, geeky” and then after the 40th… more like “no imagination.”
There is a place for that stuff, sure. It does not need to be a Mama Cass sandwich.
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It’s a name, whether it’s “generic weapon name number 47” or “pop culture reference 93” is to me quite irrelevant. It’s there so you can easily identify said object, as long as that purpose is fullfilled everything else is imo inconsequential.
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How unimaginative of you. It must be nice being mindless.
I’ll name my next necromancer Zombie in your honor. That should be sufficient.
Your mob still needs to be programmed to have a high chance to drop a Henri’s. Because cats. 
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I’m practical. Names are there for identification purposes, as long as that is fullfilled I really couldn’t care less. (I’m sure my two cats, aptly named one and two would agree)
Name it whatever you want, it has zero impact on me.
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Yeah but the Yellow mobs don’t really belong to anyone and “Yellow mob” is one loot table. The mob generation just randomly pulls the name from two lists with a bunch of stuff on it. They would have to do some sort of conditional programming like “If mob name includes Mirasol increase drop rate of cat mojo”.
I don’t see that being worth anyone’s time to program. Not that I would mind, of course, but still.
I just love that dungeon. Wish we could do more -uhm- “damage” to this dungeon’s Jay…
He seems worse than the 7 lords of hell combined… lol…
Don’t Blizzard people named mobs show up in rifts as well? Not just that one dungeon. Named after the people involved in RoS? The expansion that showed some people exist that made D3 a whole lot better. If only they had build D3 vanilla…
To those RoS people, I’ d like to say: Please make another expansion!
Personally, I rather liked that they had those “Easter egg” type names in their games. It always struck me a bit like how an artist signs his painting in some way or other.
I understand what the OW team is now dealing with. I’m not a big fan of their plan to eliminate the name either. They’ve done what needed to be done by firing the guy and I think that’s enough. Retconning the guy’s name out of the game entirely strikes me as a petty act and a virtue signal on the part of the company and current developers. I don’t have to like the artist, but he clearly did some work that a lot of people love and the work is still worthy of appreciation. I can think of several artists historically I’d apply that standard to: good work, terrible people. Of course, it’s not my game, and I don’t really play OW so I don’t have any deep attachments to the in-game character one way or other.
But, if this is their new standard - if you do something that the company eventually decides it doesn’t like, it goes full pharaoh on you, destroys all your monuments, and wipes you from history, and banishes your soul from the afterlife, they’d be wise to avoid doing any such honorary naming so they don’t have to retroactively go back and retcon all their games every time someone runs afoul of management or the latest Twitter mob.
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That seems to be what they plan to do. D3 has little easter eggs, but Overwatch had a main character hero who was critical to the story. It was one of the heros you select to play with.
It seems they will avoid making major story chars out of real people from now on. Which does make sense. I doubt they will totally give up on little easter eggs that you have to know about to even recognize.