Russell Brower Leaves Blizzard Entertainment

[Sfinna]

Read his Twitter post, here: https://twitter.com/russell_brower/s...11677023690752


Really sad to see him go. If you don't know, Russel composed pretty much most of the soundtrack of WoW, and other Blizzard games.

[Benomatic]

This is actually quite disheartening! I love his work in WoW!

[cyberglum]

I'm kind of surprised by this.

His work at Blizzard has been outstanding, one of the best at his job in the industry.

[Eleccybubb]

As I said in the news thread some amazing work done by him and the music teams for Blizzard.

Good luck to him on future endeavours.

[ls-]

WoW Blizzard is dying! /s

OT: Nice dude, had a chance to see him in person, I wonder who'll replace him.

[Byrogan]

Damn this really sucks, some of my favorite memory's of wow were because of the music he composed, he's gonna be sorely missed.

[Deleted]

He is likely continuing working for Blizzard as freelancer, as he states in his facebook post.

Not surprising at all, trapped in a certain theme too long is no good for an artist.

[McNeil]

The music has always been a great part of the game thats always been consistent in quality. Sad to see him go after doing such a great job for a long time.

[Pull My Finger]

It would be terrible if he stopped contributing to WoW. The soundtrack is one of the reasons why I'm so attached to the game.

He had an unusual position in today's industry. Everyone's outsourcing everything audio, and even most of visual stuff nowadays.

[lockybalboa]

You have to wonder why are all the key people leaving Blizzard one by one of late..

[Raven]

You have to wonder why are all the key people leaving Blizzard one by one of late..

And you have to wonder, how long is of late 2 month or maybe 2 years ?

[Dracullus]

You have to wonder why are all the key people leaving Blizzard one by one of late..

You don't really have news about new people joining Blizzard and people that joined few years ago getting more experienced and becoming new "key" members.

[DarkAmbient]

You have to wonder why are all the key people leaving Blizzard one by one of late..

Making someone like Brower redundant is a big deal. Of all of the things wrong with WoW, it's certainly not the music or the sound design.

[Deleted]

The music is the one thing that's been consistently good even when game itself has been going down the toilet. “Sound de-centralization initiative" sounds like some managerial nonsense code speak for cutting costs and damn the quality, but I'll guess we'll see. Or hear.

[Magemaer]

Damm, there goes a great composer.

Also, i miss Matt Uelman badly in Blizzard's team of composers. His ambience musics made TBC so much better.

Brower did amazing grandeur compositions.
Uelmen did outstanding ambience music.
Arkenstone composed beautiful medieval melodies.

Blizzard had a truly great team of musicians. Sad they've been letting these gems go.

[Lochton]

Read his Twitter post, here: https://twitter.com/russell_brower/s...11677023690752


Really sad to see him go. If you don't know, Russel composed pretty much most of the soundtrack of WoW, and other Blizzard games.

Sad to see him go but his journey is just started, as he's apparently to be freelance for Blizzard, as well as producing his own music.

I bid Russell Brower a good journey!

[DarkAmbient]

It's a money saving exercise. ActiBlizz has decided that they can outsource their music for less than it costs to do it all in-house. Pure business. I hope they can maintain the standard we've come to expect.

[Hitei]

It's a money saving exercise. ActiBlizz has decided that they can outsource their music for less than it costs to do it all in-house. Pure business. I hope they can maintain the standard we've come to expect.

Or Blizzard has grown to such a large state that it is impractical to have a single sound team producing everything and so de-centralized their sound and music into spread teams, which means there's no reason for there to be a single Audio Director who oversees sound.

[DarkAmbient]

Or Blizzard has grown to such a large state that it is impractical to have a single sound team producing everything and so de-centralized their sound and music into spread teams, which means there's no reason for there to be a single Audio Director who oversees sound.

I doubt if they were keeping it all in house they would have made their top guy redundant. But none of us know anything other than what he wrote, and when people of his position leave they never say anything critical about the company. Who knows what's going on. But the departure of a figure like Brower is concerning.

Interesting that no blues have posted about it.

[Deleted]

I doubt if they were keeping it all in house they would have made their top guy redundant. But none of us know anything other than what he wrote, and when people of his position leave they never say anything critical about the company. Who knows what's going on. But the departure of a figure like Brower is concerning.

Interesting that no blues have posted about it.

Having several games sound team leaders does make a "Sr. Audio Director/Composer" redundant.