Ghostcrawler to leave Blizzard Entertainment

[Odin22]

He was arrogant many times, sorry. He was dodgy and decidedly trollish many times, too. His communication *style* overall leaved a lot to be desired, he was very unprofessional more than once. But, again, as I said, he was smart and he was a machine. The deficiencies above are just a continuation of that - he was compensating for his arrogance and impatience and dodginess and everything else with the amount of communication that he was doing. I appreciated that.

What do you mean he was unprofessional more than once??!?!?

When was he professional at all?

[Aesahaettr]

As far as the game design goes, I can't see things changing massively. He wasn't the only person on his team, and his team weren't the only team who work on WoW.

That said, he went further than most of the devs in communicating to us customers about design changes and reasoning. You might not have always agreed with the decisions he oversaw, but he often explained things, or at least attempted to.

[WolfHugs]

It was shocking about GC quitting. Can't say I'm happy about it.

But now it's all up in the air. Just eager to see how things go about now

[Thorio]

Nobody remembers the forever long outages in TBC and the beginning of WOTLK. Used to nobody raided on Tuesday because the servers were never up.

There were also queues on so many servers, because the game was good and popular and there were shitton of players. Now thanks to post-Wrath devs spearheaded by GC the game is empty, servers are always available but theres too few to play with.

I am glad Blizzard put the responsibility on GC fair and square, no matter what their PR ppl spread and how many ppl are fooled.

[3stats]

Additionally I will say that MOP will be the shortest longevity expansion ever. If I am not mistaken, we will see Draenor expansion at somewhere between March to April 2014. The subscribers now won't sustain this game any further if the next expansion won't come out in 4or5 months.

GC's masterpiece MOP was the worst expansion with the most sub losses. Glad to have both come to an end.

I'd volunteer to help GC pack up his shit and GTFO. The sooner the better.

[Metallikiddd]

GC's masterpiece MOP was the worst expansion with the most sub losses. Glad to have both come to an end.

I'd volunteer to help GC pack up his shit and GTFO. The sooner the better.

/facepalm

you all should blame the people above him. they are the ones who had the final say. i'd say GC got tired of all that and decided to move on.

[championknight]

Nobody knows how the game will move forward, given no direct replacements have been mentioned. Only time will tell

The only thing I would put the blame on its the ability bloat (made worse by Cata and MoP talen remakes) which wasn't a problem in Wrath and maybe the slightly recycled class mechanics

[MoanaLisa]

I am glad Blizzard put the responsibility on GC fair and square, no matter what their PR ppl spread and how many ppl are fooled.

You should provide some evidence for that that extends past personal opinion.

[Alvito]

Put it in context. Wow had >12M in wotlk. GC came and now it has 7.6M.

As did dozens of other employees. I am in no way saying he was great, but far too many people blame him for things he has nothing to do with. Also it wasn't anywhere near 12 million before he got there. He started at Blizzard in 2008 before Wrath. So since he came on towards the mid point of BC are we now going to give him credit for the millions of subs that the game gained when he first came onboard?

[Cosmic Janitor]

Personally I wonder how this will impact the development of the expansion. How many things will be excused with "GC did it!" from now on when they won't work in WoD? Might they even try to explain why we will have 5.4.x for 8+ months this way?

By the way its kind of ridiculous that people still argue about his marine biologist profession and I'm by no means a fan of mr. Street. If indie game developers showed us anything it is that it matters jack shit what your previous profession was. Especially the artsy fartsy part of video games does not require a degree in any related field and to be honest, I believe that someone with a degree in math would probably be better suited for balancing classes than a guy wo studied game development. If some of the people here actually ever saw a university from the inside they probably know that you can read up on any topic, what you make of it after that depends on your intelect and experience. If you have these two things along with some basic knowledge of the field you try to work in there is nothing going to stop you.

[MoanaLisa]

Personally I wonder how this will impact the development of the expansion. How many things will be excused with "GC did it!" from now on when they won't work in WoD? Might they even try to explain why we will have 5.4.x for 8+ months this way?

Well, I hope not because that will lead to a lot of infractions. He's leaving next Friday. Anything that gets into WoD that people don't like will have passed through development, a beta and several months of time. I suppose if people feel the need next summer to be blaming stuff on GC I'd probably think that was just trolling. But I guess we'll wait and find out. GC says that things are well in hand and in any case Chilton is in charge of the game (as he has been all along).

[coldrain]

Chilton is in charge of the game (as he has been all along).

Not entirely true

The MMO Gamer: First of all, for those of our readers who may be unfamiliar, tell us a little bit about yourself, and what it is you do for Blizzard.

Jeffrey Kaplan: Of course. My name is Jeffrey Kaplan, I’m a lead game designer on World of Warcraft. We have two lead game designers on World of Warcraft, one is Tom Chilton, the other is myself. I’m responsible for the world side of game design for World of Warcraft, that includes things like quests, dungeons, raids, and everything that goes along with those things, and then Tom handles things such as PvP, game systems, and class balance.

[Guyviroth]

Funny that people bitch about GC being the reason that WoW went down to 7.6 million subs.

Even more funny how they conveniently forgot how it was GC who took us to the peak of 12 million in the first place.

[Deleted]

im glad hes gone he made PVP rubbish in the game when he came to wow at the end of BC and look how the wow subs have gone a little peak up to 12 mill then dropped ever since i say good riddance worst person to ever be apart of wow. i hope he goes and ruins the COD franchise now not that it needs any help in doing that

[Synstir]

So for the last year they kept him in pay to NOT work on Warlords of Draenor but to leech money from the company?

Well, and I don't know if this is true or not, it is a possibility that GC was only working on the patches for MoP and didn't have any influence on WoD.
I am saying it again: this is just a possibility, nothing more than that.

I don't have an opinion on GC himself, as I don't know him nor follow him on forums or twitter.

[coldrain]

actually ghostcrawler made all of WoD. it's already done. gonna have to skip that expansion to see what WoW will be like without him. see you guys back here in 2-3 years