Ghostcrawler leaving WoW

[Cobaltius]

He almost never talked to the community, especially in a direct non blog post fashion. He did for a bit during the wrath beta, but he made himself look like an idiot on the class forums and was caught several times editing peoples posts that he quoted to respond too to make them look like they were wrong. He ended up getting his ass flamed so fiercely after that, that he never came back.

If memory serves higher ups at Blizzard made him stop having direct contact via the forum with the player base.

[Annoying]

who ever is the next guy may god have mercy on his soul. I can imagine them at the office.


"Alright guys take it easy" Says GC and with a smile and wave he walks out the room and the door audibly cloeses. The other devs all stare at his chair and then look at each other "Ok so who is gonna sit down here" One says as he crosss his arms. They all look at the chair and remember the nights GC sat there looking as if his soul was being siphoned and a cool chill came through the office. "Fuck that" And they all fight over each other to get away from the dreaded seat.

Terenas Menethil approaches the devs.
Terenas: Without its master's command, the restless RF noobs, QQers and casuals will become an even greater threat to this world. Control must be maintained. There must always be...a GHOSTCRAWLER!

Stolen from the official forums.

[Zatetic]

abandon your mages. we're no longer protected.

[roboscorcher]

Can someone make a list of changes he actually influenced? I didn't follow him too much, but think he was lead system designer. So he was in charge of the new talent systems and class resources, no? Those are good things. Also, I enjoyed his devblogs.

I'll miss you, regardless, GC. I'd ask for your job, but I don't know if I could handle all the trolls.

[Defengar]

If memory serves higher ups at Blizzard made him stop having direct contact via the forum with the player base.

Because he was antagonizing people so much.

[Electryon]

After reading about of quarter of these comments I'm convinced that a large portion of this community is sociopathic.

[Fiddlesnarf]

Threads like this prove that MMO-Champion is the worst WoW community.

[Struggle]

So he was in charge of the new talent systems and class resources, no? Those are good things.

Well the warlock ones are piss poor so there's a wrench in your comment...

[Cobaltius]

Can someone make a list of changes he actually influenced? I didn't follow him too much, but think he was lead system designer. So he was in charge of the new talent systems and class resources, no? Those are good things. Also, I enjoyed his devblogs.

I'll miss you, regardless, GC. I'd ask for your job, but I don't know if I could handle all the trolls.

We he removed a wide range of variables, skill/talent choices, buffs, etc... replaced them with mostly insignificant ones to make his job easier.

[Dexiefy]

He's been a fantastic voice of the development team, and it's because of that communication that he's blamed for everything that's been perceived to be bad that's ever happened to the game, while being given very little praise at all for any of the good things.

Whoever steps up to take on that mantle, it seems to be Celestalon, has quite something to live up to. Good luck to both of them.

Fantastic voice? he was literally the most disrespectful and unprofessional dev i've ever seen... Not mentioning he was always a smart ass who very often had absolutely NO IDEA what he was talking about and when community was showing him how wrong he was, he was simply ignoring said community. No idea how anyone can say a good thing about him in this department...

He is being blamed for everything cause he was LEAD designer... You know what that means, right? HE had the final say what goes through, what doesnt. Why the fuck you think in every company its the guy who is LEADING a project the one responsible for the outcome? cause his decisions are the final ones. GC decisions led wow from 12.1 mil subs to 7mil. He fucking managed to nearly half the playerbase...
Also please, tell me what did he brought to WoW that was so amazing?

LFD? Sorry but while making the game more convinient, it broke game immersion and caused the world to be dead which now they desperately try to revive.
LFR? Sorry that thing simply took prestige out of raiding. It never should ahve rewarded players with epics as according to blizz, it was to show players content.
Wellfare epics+50 variations of tier sets? Sorry that took away any kind of sense of acomplishment from the players.
Epics being epic? who are we kidding, he destroyed gear progression and devalued epics in wotlk with his decision to make expansion gear be superior compared to previous expansion and epics being on every turn. Just look at naxx ilvls in vanilla and sunwell ilvls in tbc. Best epics from Kelthuzad were ilvl ~95.. ~1.5x player level. Tbc was ~ilvl 150 which was slightly over 2x player level. In wotlk first epic was 2.5x player level. Things you were crafting at start of wotlk, should have been items dropping from lich king... and now we ahve item squish cause they no longer can get hold of this and can no longer change the route they took in wotlk. All of this for what? jsut so palyers cant use gear they earned for "too long"? Now devs have to sit and adjust numbers for next expansion rather than work on actually new content... Haven't you noticed that every expansion offers less and less content? At least partially, you ahve GC to thank for that
Speaking of epics... How fucking interesting are all those items that have base stat+stamina +2 random stats... every single fucking item is the same... So interesting design idd, lets praise him for this. Now players don't ahve to disenchant so much...
Speaking of disenchanting. Professions have gotten so interesting these days, huh? every single one offers pretty much the same bonus and only moneymaking aspect matters anymore...
OR maybe shall we praise him for reforging? hardly an interesting concept, just a money sink along with tedious task of "customizing" your gear... sadly it took blizz years to notice how boring this feature is...
Pokemon? sorry, aint that just a copy paste?
Farmville? as above
Transmogrification? ah, here we have it... first actually good feature, that revived old world abit, or rather made old instances being visited even by new players and gave palyers options to customize their characters and make the game more fun...
So here, 1 actually good idea, compared to how many bad ones? or ones that while bringing something good, also destroyed something else? cant be even arsed to count... But yeah, lets praise ghostcrawler, such a good decision maker, lets build him a golden statue...

[Ghier]

3 million lost subs (in 1 year nonetheless) = $540~ million lost per year. Heads just have to roll over a loss like that. I know those numbers aren't accurate because they count subs that aren't actually subs and some people don't pay monthly, but it is a good idea.

[Azrile]

Yes, it sold a lot of copies. It was intended to introduce the Blizzard's Real Money Auction House, at which it failed, period.
Its launch was a disaster of epic proportions, thanks to Blizzard's always-online authentication. While it got decent to good reviews, it had terrible word of mouth, and a middling reception at best. (It currently is rocking a two and a half stars on Amazon.) It may have killed the Diablo franchise.

In the short term, it was a financial success. It failed at its secondary revenue goal, and damaged the brand. Whether you call that a success or not likely depends on whether you define success in terms of next quarter's revenue, or product quality and long-term revenue.

Real Money auction house was never supposed to be a real money-maker. It´s sole purpose was to cut down on Support Tickets to Blizzard. D2 did not have a RMAH.. instead there were all kinda shaddy 3rd party sites that did it. And guess what, when people got scammed, who did they call? Blizzard. And that was 10 years ago. Can you imagine how much more sophisticated the scammer would be now?

[miffy23]

So many clueless people hating in this thread...it's really sad.

GC was a major driving force behind WoW and has done a ton for the game, and he will be sorely missed. Especially him making fun of stupid questions too =)

I salute a great one! Thx for all you did for our beloved game!

[corebit]

Really sad to see GC go, he is one of the most active and passionate developers around. He basically pioneered the hybrid classes viability in Tanking and DPS, and made great strides to have viable classes in PVE end-game content.

It is especially funny and ironic seeing hybrid class players rejoicing that GC is leaving while Afrasiabi is returning to WoD.

The complainers will keep complaining, they will just look for a different spacegoat this time to blame, mark my words.

[Azrile]

3 million lost subs (in 1 year nonetheless) = $540~ million lost per year. Heads just have to roll over a loss like that. I know those numbers aren't accurate because they count subs that aren't actually subs and some people don't pay monthly, but it is a good idea.

Almost all of the sub losses were from China. Blizzard and WOW are earning as much money now as they ever did. The last few quarters, ATVI has beat estimates and year over year numbers. The people at Blizzard aren´t stupid, they knew the sub losses were from china and because of the f2p game that launched there last December.

[Deleted]

Can someone make a list of changes he actually influenced? I didn't follow him too much, but think he was lead system designer. So he was in charge of the new talent systems and class resources, no? Those are good things. Also, I enjoyed his devblogs.

I'll miss you, regardless, GC. I'd ask for your job, but I don't know if I could handle all the trolls.

GC was Lead Systems Designer. But he wasn't at the top of the chain making all the decisions. Despite this, people seem to think he was...

Cory Stockton is Lead Content Designer. He is responsible for overseeing the design and implementation of all exterior zones, dungeons, Battlegrounds, Arenas, and cities.

Ion Hazzikostas is the curernt Lead Encounter Designer. He handles dungeons and raids, mainly.

Tom Chilton is the Lead Game Designer. He oversees MOST things and is most likely the boss of these guys. So I'd imagine that anything bad GC could've tinkered up about your favorite class (your being anyone who reads this) must've gotten through approval by Chilton anyway.

And then we have the story guys, such as Chris Metzen, Dave Kosak and Alex Afrasiabi. And numerous others.

And still, people seriously think GC handles close to everything in the game and is to blame for it all.

[Electryon]

If you think those lost subs are because of "unbalanced class design" or some other inside baseball issue you are delusional. The people who have played this game for almost a decade are by and large getting older and have more going on in their lives as they move into their 30s and 40s. The decline was always going to come, it's amazing it is still doing as great as it is.

[Deleted]

He is being blamed for everything cause he was LEAD designer... You know what that means, right? HE had the final say what goes through, what doesnt. Why the fuck you think in every company its the guy who is LEADING a project the one responsible for the outcome?

He was A lead designer. Read my posts, you'll find that there are several others.

If anyone has the role you're describing, it's Tom Chilton.

[Fiddlesnarf]

Fantastic voice? he was literally the most disrespectful and unprofessional dev i've ever seen... Not mentioning he was always a smart ass who very often had absolutely NO IDEA what he was talking about and when community was showing him how wrong he was, he was simply ignoring said community. No idea how anyone can say a good thing about him in this department...

The WoW community, yourself incredibly included are a bunch of entitled know-it-alls. I'd leave it to a Game Dev to know better than some loser on the most toxic WoW community there is.

[mvaliz]

who ever is the next guy may god have mercy on his soul. I can imagine them at the office.


"Alright guys take it easy" Says GC and with a smile and wave he walks out the room and the door audibly cloeses. The other devs all stare at his chair and then look at each other "Ok so who is gonna sit down here" One says as he crosss his arms. They all look at the chair and remember the nights GC sat there looking as if his soul was being siphoned and a cool chill came through the office. "Fuck that" And they all fight over each other to get away from the dreaded seat.

So... basically you're saying that GC was the Lich King sitting atop the Frozen Throne? :P