"How a Diablo expansion led to behind the scenes trouble"

PG:

“The head of Blizzard South,...went on vacation”.... “The parent company took that moment to say, ‘Okay, we have to find somebody to make a Diablo expansion pack.’ And basically, the expansion had to be done before that guy came back from vacation, because he was dead set against an expansion.”

...

Blizzard North’s leaders tended to speak up when Hellfire clashed with Diablo’s grim-dark setting and tone. “That was a sticky situation where we all wanted the game to be successful”.... “I think the Synergistic team did a pretty good job. There were just certain requests we made, and they were summarily ignored. The one instance I remember the most is this teddy bear quest. A girl lost her teddy bear or something, and I didn’t want the quest in the game. It ended up being in the game. They guaranteed it would be removed, but in the end, it wasn’t.”