Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street Leaves Blizzard Entertainment

[Steven Bogos]

Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street Leaves Blizzard Entertainment

Love him or hate him, Ghostcrawler will no longer be Blizzard's unofficial forum mouthpiece.

If you've followed World of Warcraft for any period of time, you would have heard of the name "Ghostcrawler." Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street was a designer for the game, who wasn't afraid to have his voice heard on the forums and respond to individual posters. Now, Ghostcrawler has decided that it's time for him to leave his friends a Blizzard behind, announcing that he has left the company on amicable terms to pursue a new career opportunity.

He has posted the following official statement on the Battle.net forums [http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/10715261517]:

You know that part at the end of raid night when the final boss is dead and you're done handing out loot and everyone kind of goes their separate ways? Yeah, this is one of those times.

We just came off of a great BlizzCon. We had so many different games to talk about, and we were thrilled at the reception of Warlords of Draenor. It was great to meet or reconnect with so many of you. I love BlizzCon dearly, which makes it so hard to tell you that this will be my last one, or at least my last one up on stage. An opportunity has come my way, and I have made the very tough decision to move on from Blizzard.

I wanted to thank all of you for being a part of this grand quest. I have said a hundred times that having passionate gamers, including the angry ones, is a far better place to be than having a community that doesn't care. You all care. Like us, you want the game to be the best that it can be. So I ask you to keep on providing your feedback. I promise (and I rarely promise!) that the developers care very much about what you have to say.

I'll be out there, and I can't imagine it will be that hard to find me.

Hugs, Ghostcrawler

P.S. No, you can't have a pony. Or a moose. Or a mantis shrimp. Or a tardigrade. Or a crab. Keep trying though.

P.P.S. I play a Holy Priest.

Ghostcrawler was the kind of guy people either loved or hated - because he was often the one who delivered news of nerfs and buffs, he unfortunately fell into the whole "shoot the messenger" trap. It's sad to see him go, as if we can all agree on one thing about GC, it's that he cared about the community.

Source: Battle.net [http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/10715261517]

Permalink

 

[Nilanius]

Cared about the community? Uh nope. The one thing I will always remember when I used to support WoW was when I got into beta for mists of pandaria, and myself and many others were experiencing performance issues with Cross Realm Zones (CRZ) and bugs, the reports were ignored and CRZ went live. When we again tried reporting the same issues, along with a whole slew of people who weren't in beta, this "mouthpiece" of Blizzard responded with "Anyone who dislikes CRZ for whatever reason they claim, just wants a single player game and should go play skyrim instead".

For me, that was the last straw. And when I spoke up saying that the response was unprofessional and would effect WoW and its subscription numbers worse than it already was suffering, this guy decided to ban me for the feedback from their forum for 7 days, and labeled it a final warning for "harassing a blizzard developer". The post had no "he should be fired". Had no "this should happen to him". It was just "He's very unprofessional, and it's an attitude like that, that will drag a company down if not addressed"

He took over WoW's development at the end of wrath of the lich king. the expansion that put the subscription numbers at 12 million. And the expansion he developed? Cataclysm lost huge numbers within 2 years. Then mists of pandaria and his precious CRZ, lost blizzard more subscribers in 1 year, than cataclysm did in 2. So his leaving should start to help WoW. As long as they can put someone in his place to start repairing all the damage ghostcrawler has done. But given what I've seen of the new expansion they announced, and the reviews players are giving on it, the damage may already be irreparable. Only time will tell now.

 

[JayRPG]

Good riddance, though I doubt they will be able to salvage the mess he left behind.

This game started going downhill as soon as he took over, they moved all their good devs to Titan which seemed like a good idea had they had any actual aspirations of releasing it (I mean come on, they work on it for over 4 years and then all of a sudden it's not good enough, well no fucking shit, the game is already 4 years old, maybe if you didn't have the development times of the kid who placed last in the 100m sprint at the special Olympics the game wouldn't have needed rebuilding)

Bring back Kaplan from Titan development and they might have a playable game again, that's when the game started going downhill -

- The last Raid Kaplan was a part of: Ulduar
- The first Raid after Kaplan departs: Crusaders' Coliseum (Argent Tournament)

Bring back the devs from the glory days of raiding (Burning Crusade) and I might play again.

 

[Bigeyez]

What was always amazing (and you can see the proof of it in this very thread) is that people blame this single person for everything they didn't like about WoW for the past 5 years.....as if he was the sole person with any input, say, or final call on making design decisions. It's not like WoW's dev team (even if you only count the leads!) isn't a huge collaboration...Definitely fell into the shoot the messenger trap.

I wish other devs would be as vocal and community driven Ghostcrawler was/is. If every company as large as Blizzard had more devs as hands on with their community as he was it would be better for gaming as a whole.

 

[Flutterguy]

I no longer have a reason to re-sub

 

[Ticklefist]

I've been out of the game for 3 years but I enjoyed GC's candor. Nice to see him finally tell people what class he actually played. I remember at one point we all thought he was playing a Prot Pally when they were the go to tanks in ICC. Good dude. Every game company should have someone like him.

 

[The Great JT]

Maybe now Mages will stop getting nerfed...oh wait, that's Zarhym's fault.

 

[Cartographer]

Bring back the devs from the glory days of raiding (Burning Crusade) and I might play again.

They all jumped ship before wrath and now work for Carbine studios.
On the plus side, they're about to release WildStar so we can see if they've still got the magic touch.

 

[ogrebushi]

Well he covered the first thing I thought of
"P.S. No, you can't have a pony. Or a moose. Or a mantis shrimp. Or a tardigrade. Or a crab. Keep trying though."
which was that he promised me a moose .. mind you I havent had a wow sub since mid cata so im not sure what id do with it

 

[SecondPrize]

GC's problem was that he was the face for a dev team that was plundered of talent for Titan. Course all the work that went into Titan was scrapped so I guess the price they paid in terms of crap WoW content wasn't worth it. Mind you, knowing this, I still dislike GC.

 

[anthony87]

actually i just blame him for what they did to talent trees...and that was in fact very much his doing...

he was the one that started the trend of telling people less choice was somehow more choice...and then just endlessly repeating it and letting the white knights bash people into submissive acceptance of a false reality simply because it made his specific job easier.

well, sorry ghostcrawler...but i really don't like people who misrepresent reality...even less when they have a sycophantic mob at their back and are knowingly make of use of it to out shout dissenters.

four lights are four lights.

good riddance.

Under the old talent system I was pretty much stuck using whatever talent tree setup was deemed "best" for Balance Druids, as was every other Balance Druid. Under the current system I'm able to change my talents on a fight per fight basis depending on what boss, how many adds etc.

The old system was basically a choice between PvE build, PvP build and "doing worse than people who are using the best build" build. Such flexibility...

 

[Ryan Hughes]

It seems even GhostCrawler cannot stand to work for Bobby Kotick. Well, no matter, as far as me, I stopped caring about WoW long, long ago, but I do disagree that this is a "shoot the messenger" type of deal, as being head of design carries great weight, and really, even minor changes are ultimately your responsibility. "The buck stops here," so to speak.

It honestly does not matter anyway, as no matter how large your development team is, communities will eat through your content faster than you can create it, and they will find the most minute flaws to exploit. Such is the way with the MMO, which is one of the reasons I now hate them.

 

[LordMonty]

Good for him, you don't want to get stuck in the same job forever. I hope he find happiness in his now work. WoW is on the declince but it'll go on for a few more years lets hope maybe a fresh face here and there breaths new life into this old warhorse of the MMO market.

 

[Sectan]

Under the old talent system I was pretty much stuck using whatever talent tree setup was deemed "best" for Balance Druids, as was every other Balance Druid. Under the current system I'm able to change my talents on a fight per fight basis depending on what boss, how many adds etc.

The old system was basically a choice between PvE build, PvP build and "doing worse than people who are using the best build" build. Such flexibility...

Well mid Wrath I experimented with a Ret/Holy paladin and did fairly well in arenas and battlegrounds. Spec'd all the way down to get replenishment and repentance and spent the rest to get holy shock. That was customization and experimentation. You could fill a niche for certain encounters even if that meant crippling yourself in others. The new three point talent tree doesn't do customization well. You do the same thing, just slightly differently.

For examples on a Warrior you either have a regular CD charge with 2 uses or just have a charge with a shorter cooldown...Not huge game changers. Also, how many warriors do you see using Enraged Regeneration over Second Wind or Impending Victory?

On a positive note I will say that being able to change single talents instead of wiping everything is a big plus.

 

[Zing]

Should have happened years ago. Funny that the game went downhill when he turned up. Damage is done though anyway.

Also to say he was just "the messenger" is stupid. He was the lead system designer, and thus was ultimately the final decision for all matters of balance, and the changes to its core systems. Many of his posts in the past had showed a huge lack of understanding, especially when it came to PvP.

 

[JayRPG]

Bring back the devs from the glory days of raiding (Burning Crusade) and I might play again.

They all jumped ship before wrath and now work for Carbine studios.
On the plus side, they're about to release WildStar so we can see if they've still got the magic touch.

I can't believe I didn't know about this, it actually looks pretty good.