Rob Pardo Leaving Blizzard as Chief Creative Officer

[John Keefer]

Rob Pardo Leaving Blizzard as Chief Creative Officer

After 17 years, he is moving on to a new challenge that he will announce sometime later ... "when it's ready."

Blizzard Entertainment's Chief Creative Officer Rob Pardo is leaving the company to pursue an as yet unannounced opportunity, but he promises to let everyone know "when it's ready."

"My priorities are to enjoy the summer with my family, play plenty of games, and think about what's next," he said in announcement to fans [http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/13348514719] on the official site. "The game industry is such an exciting place right now with PC gaming thriving, the new consoles, mobile games, and virtual reality becoming an actual reality. It's like having an empty quest log and going into a new zone for the first time."

Pardo gave the usual platitudes to the company and fans for making his time at Blizzard memorable. "I'm really proud of the contributions I was able to make to Blizzard's accomplishments. From building lasting games, to supporting the growth of eSports, to extending the Warcraft world into a feature film, and of course to being able to celebrate our shared passions with the Blizzard community online and at BlizzCon."

Prior to becoming the CCO at Blizzard, Pardo was well known for his work as lead designer on World of Warcraft and it's expansions, as well as the Warcraft 3 expansions. He also had his hand in the Diablo and StarCraft franchises, first working on the original StarCraft when he joined the company in 1997.

Pardo was even parodied in the South Park episode Make Love, Not Warcraft in 2006, the same year he was named one of the 100 most influential people by Time Magazine.

"I'm looking forward to new challenges in my career, but I will always cherish the time I spent with you all and the amazing and collaborative teams at Blizzard," he said in his departure note. "It was both satisfying and humbling, and it made me a better developer and a better person. I look forward to playing Blizzard games as a player for many years to come. Most important, now I have plenty of time to learn how to build a competitive Hearthstone deck."

He asked fans to keep up with him on Twitter via @Rob_Pardo [https://twitter.com/Rob_Pardo].

Permalink

 

[Ticklefist]

This, unlike Greg Street's departure, seems meaningful?.



Meaningful? is a trademark of Blizzard Entertainment. All rights reserved.

 

[Gizen]

How much you wanna bet it's revealed a few months down the line that he'll be working for Riot Games? Seems nowadays that everytime someone leaves Blizzard, that's where they wind up.

 

[oldtaku]

Spending time with my family? Uh oh.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Holy Warcraft. Now this is pretty big news. I am actually interested in seeing what he does next.

 

[Worgen]

I'm guessing he got bored of not having anything creative to do.

 

[Tiamat666]

My crystal ball says the next high profile Kickstarter project will show up some time around "when it's ready".

 

[Rawbeard]

Is he moving to Titan aka paid vacation?

 

[DugMachine]

Huge news to say the least. May he venture on to bigger and greater things.

 

[faefrost]

Spending time with my family? Uh oh.

Nah! I take it to mean he is taking a nice long 3 month vacation to run out his non compete before he pops up somewhere else. Probably starting a studio himself or in partnership. At least I kind of hope so. Pardo has always seemed remarkably drama and ego free, at least on the public stage. We can nitpick How well WoW has aged to death, but save for Diablo 3's initial release I can't think of a game Blizzard has made in those 18 years that I have not enjoyed. (And Diablo 3 even redeemed itself in the end.) so given that I think it would be kind of sad for all of us if he is simply retiring. We need fewer Rockstar developers, and more quietly competent ones who give us good product time after time.

 

[Paragon Fury]

Its sad to see someone attached to so many great games go.

Now, if, on the other hand, we could get rid of Chris Metzen/have him voluntarily leave Alliance players would break out in jubilation parties EVERYWHERE, ALL DAY E'RRYDAY until his replacement arrived.

 

[Ferisar]

Its sad to see someone attached to so many great games go.

Now, if, on the other hand, we could get rid of Chris Metzen/have him voluntarily leave Alliance players would break out in jubilation parties EVERYWHERE, ALL DAY E'RRYDAY until his replacement arrived.

I think people severely overestimate how much Chris Metzen dislikes Alliance. He voices your leader And our previous leader... and Ragnaros... And... yeah he kind of voices everyone, nevermind.

OT:
Sad day, but understandable. I wish him all the best, especially after 17 years of working for a pretty well-set development studio.

 

[Nilanius]

You know, I'm no longer a fan of Blizzard or their games. I stopped liking WoW shortly after Mist of Pandaria came out and their at the time, lead developer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street was responding to bug reports accusing fans of just wanting a single player game because they disliked a horribly buggy and unneeded system that caused tons of problems for the game.

And the day he left, was actually a good day for Blizzard, because a really horrid attitude person who was doing their business no favor and in fact, chased away quite a few formerly loyal fans.

However, all that being said, losing Rob Pardo, definitely does Blizzard nothing but harm. I sincerely believe Blizzard, especially World of Warcraft, are slowly dying. And when their best start to jump ship, you know something is up. I am predicting that warlords of draenor will flop, and hard.

I wish Rob Pardo luck in wherever he goes though.