Blizzard "has no plans" to turn Diablo 3 into an eSport

If, like the fiery Butcher above, you're a bit vexed at the prolonged absence of PvP within Diablo 3 , this spot of news probably won't sate your wrath. During a press conference held at Blizzard's Battle.net World Championship in Shanghai last weekend (via Gaming Blend ), CEO Mike Morhaime revealed the studio holds "no plans" to bring the hack-and-crawl RPG into competitive tournament play.

"Diablo 3 was never really designed to be an eSport, and not every game necessarily needs to be an eSport," Morhaime said.

Morhaime contrasted with the StarCraft franchise's deep-seated eSport roots shaping the design direction of StarCraft 2 to allot for high-grade competitions from day one. Its MMO sibling, World of Warcraft, obviously adopted a different structure, but the viewability of its arena matches propelled its viability as a tournament title.

As for organizing any sort of structured PvP for Diablo 3, Morhaime explained the presentation would deviate quite heavily from Blizzard's current tournament offerings, saying, "In order to do that, you really need to get everything right and you have to have the depth of strategy, you have to look at making sure that the strategies that are successful are balanced, and fun, and entertaining to watch, and all those things."

Diablo 3's patch 1.1 added PvP but remains entombed in limbo as Blizzard finalizes various patchy things. No launch date has been set yet. Relevant to all this, D3 Game Director Jay Wilson mentioned on Twitter today that he expects more information on PvP to be posted soon.