Was Ghostcrawler fired/forced out?

[zephid]

No, he left on his own.

[Kuja]

Why leave the most profitable gaming company in the world? Unless he was just a rat escaping a sinking ship.. :O

[Deleted]

He's going to League

hope not, that would be a waste of a good brain for nothing.

[Azureqt]

Thank god he's gone. Now he can ruin some other game.

[Deleted]

He was fired for sure.
None with his right mind leaves such rich company by himself. Especially with his position at Blizzard.

[Kraenen]

Mature people have generally a more large scope to analyze things.

and "mature" people understand there are certain factors that are critical in influence, like gc on sub numbers.

[Herecius]

He was fired for sure.
None with his right mind leaves such rich company by himself. Especially with his position at Blizzard.

Except they do. All the time. In fact it's extremely common for very successful and influential developers to leave their home companies to go to other, smaller companies, or even form their own start-ups.

None of us know what Greg Street's career plan and life plan is. No more than I would presume to know your career plan, zaxx.

[Deleted]

and "mature" people understand there are certain factors that are critical in influence, like gc on sub numbers.

Sorry are you trying to say the GC has more influence over the sub numbers than say, oh I don't know, the people who were in their mid / late teens when the game was released are now nearly 30?

[Pann]

I have no reason to disbelieve what he has said and I am not sure it is any of our business whether he resigned or was fired.

[Kelimbror]

For all we know he was offered a chance to join an expeditionary team to study unknown creatures in the deep sea. There's a myriad of reasons why you would leave a job like this, the first being sheer boredom. We all like to think these people are living their dream and they may think so at first too...after a lot of years anywhere you'll start to wonder if you made the wrong choice. Whatever he's doing I'm sure it's what he wanted to do. More power to his crabby little pincers...thanks for the good years.

[Deleted]

Honestly I still find it strange he left.
He literally just jumped out of Blizzard,out of blue with no previous hint (at all) about something like this.And he probably didn't make that decision in 3 days and then just decided to go to Facebook and say "Hey,guys!I'm leaving!".Blizzard is one of the most profitable gaming companies,even though I wouldn't be surprised if he was just bored with everything.Still,he might have been fired.Not saying he was,but he might have been.For some reason.

[Scinder]

I think there's about a 1% chance he was even in danger of being forced out. There's no way to know for sure but this kind of movement is typical in the corporate world. Once you present yourself and can show everyone that you are talented, people will want to buy your services.

[liam78]

As much as I think GC was hugely unsuccessful and deserved getting firing, I suspect his leaving has more to do with the old WoW team coming back on board to take the reins after Titan got the axe rendering GC redundant and perhaps out of sync with the old WoW dev team's perspective of what WoW gameplay should be.

[Pony Soldier]

He probably left because he was sick of all the idiots playing this game. I wouldn't blame him.

[alemaite]

I think things just weren't working out. He would probably have gotten fired at some point if things didn't get any better and prefered leaving now than ruining his career.

[Bullettime]

Honestly I still find it strange he left.
He literally just jumped out of Blizzard,out of blue with no previous hint (at all) about something like this.And he probably didn't make that decision in 3 days and then just decided to go to Facebook and say "Hey,guys!I'm leaving!".Blizzard is one of the most profitable gaming companies,even though I wouldn't be surprised if he was just bored with everything.Still,he might have been fired.Not saying he was,but he might have been.For some reason.

Decisions like this are made way in advance. He was probably given an offer months ago and things take time to put into motion and finalize. Ghostcrawler wouldn't have been one of the leaders of the Blizzcon discussions, both on and off stage, if he were on such bad terms with Blizzard. The guy has paid his dues but there's simply no room for career advancement at his position unless Tom Chilton stepped down; his immediate boss. Someone probably gave him an offer to move up the ladder with another company and he took it and given his comments about "likely not being hard to find" and "staying in the industry" suggests that as well.

Blizzard is a company with a lot of career advancement opportunity if starting at the bottom but he was at a point where no amount of years at the company would let him go any higher unless some of their "lifers" died or left the company which were both unlikely to happen anytime soon. He could stay at Blizzard and do the same job or he could take a senior development position at someone like Riot Games.

I find it depressing how many people truly think it was Ghostcrawler who ruined the game. He gets blame for
-PvP: Hollinka's team and before him, Chilton had a specific team who did the bulk of the legwork here even as the lead game designer
-Dungeons and raids: This used to be J. Allen Brack's team up up until the reins were handed to Ion Hazzikostas and they settled on a rigid team.
-Lore/Quest: This was a joint effort between Metzen to write it, Dave Kosak to implement it, and Cory Stockton to polish it.
-"Fluff" content: Things like pet battles and the new garrisons are a Cory Stockton area
-World design: This is Alex Afrasiabi's area. The no flying debacle is on him as well.

The main things Ghostcrawler did were dungeon finder/LFR, transmogrification, badge/point loot, itemization, and class balance. Of course classes became more homogenized over time but it was largely 10H raiding that forced them to do so to ensure that all classes could be brought. Class balance in particular is better than it's ever been.

Ghostcrawler was simply another name on the team under Chilton with his own specific area no different than the others I mentioned above. But because Ghostcrawler was the one to come to the forums and was willing to discuss issues and explain changes made by the WoW team as a whole, he got a lot of hate directed at him and a lot of people overestimating his power on the team. If people are unhappy, they should be directing their anger at Tom Chilton as the game's director and lead game designer; the manager of the entire WoW team. Or even a step farther, Rob Pardo who's the VP of game design over all Blizzard games. But it's easier to blame Ghostcrawler as he's the most easily accessible member of the team through his active Twitter feed.

Blaming people for unhappiness is fine but people at least need to blame the right people.

[Salted Beef]

GC was not responsible for the spike in subscriptions. Non MMO-gamers looking for a sequel to The Frozen Throne were, and they weren't bound to stick around for long.

[Osmeric]

He was fired for sure.
None with his right mind leaves such rich company by himself. Especially with his position at Blizzard.

This is simply not the case. People leave rich companies all the time, if they think they can do better elsewhere.

Amorise: how dare you introduce sense and reason into this thread!

[Deleted]

Of course he was, You can't run off 60% of the casual player base with a system far too complicated for the average player without some type of ramifications.

- - - Updated - - -



Yes it is low it's 60% lower than it was before him.

can you do maths? a max of what, 13 million? and now 7.something... that's not even 50% lower.

and he got another job, so i'm gonna say no, he just left, because i don't wear a tinfoil hat

[Metallikiddd]

1000% he was fired. Cmon this dude ruined the game.

NO NO NO NO.....Kalgan ruined the game. Get it right already. Get that terrorist out of the gaming industry.