Rob Pardo leaving Blizzard. Thoughts?

Ortwig

Lead designer of vanilla WoW and Burning Crusade is moving on.  What say you?

http://wow.joystiq.com/2014/07/03/rob-pardo-is-leaving-blizzard/

 

 

 

irpugboss

My guess is he left for professional reasons not related to how he felt about World of Warcraft specifically.

People don't quit jobs for reasons like that. He probably was bored with it after so long, wants to do something new, maybe offered more opportunities elsewhere and/or is tired with the game industry hours and wants more time with his family as he briefly mentioned.

Such is life as a working professional. Hopefully we get to see him spread his wings with an indie studio or somethin

Reklaw

I don't think he has to even look for something else but that something else would be presented to him. With his job history at Blizzard I bet plenty of gamecompany's might even be linning up to get him.

Scypheroth

GOOD STUFF! maybe he can find a diffrent company n make a vanilla wow like game again...modern wow is compleat shit

Kyleran

Good for him, about time he got a new game show.

teddy_bare

Originally posted by Reklaw
I don't think he has to even look for something else but that something else would be presented to him. With his job history at Blizzard I bet plenty of gamecompany's might even be linning up to get him.

Of course they are lining up to get him. The man was the lead designer of vanilla WoW and BC, in terms of sales those two games sold what, something like a combined 50 MILLION (rounded for effect, the real number is something like 45 million as of 2013)copies worldwide, let alone the 100+ million subscribers WoW has had. Those are staggering numbers, in terms of sales it has outsold nearly every other AAA release during it's lifetime. Those are the kinds of numbers publishers cream their drawers over, and it's almost guaranteed that he will be getting some epic numbers thrown at him left and right, if it hasn't already started. The real question is if he'll take any of those offers, or if he'll do his own thing via crowd-funding, or some other route. It has to be taken into consideration that when he joined Blizzard it was still BLIZZARD, not Acti-Blizzard or w/etf they call themselves now, so maybe that's what pushed him out the door, or maybe not.

All that being said, just b/c the man caught the equivalent of Dark Energy in a bottle once certainly doesn't mean he'll be able to do it again. I am kind of of the opinion that we won't see another WoW until the experience of games themselves changes significantly. But hopefully he, and everyone else, will realize that and won't put such crazy expectations on his next game. I have a feeling that won't be the case though, and his next project will be touted as the second coming by some.

Grunty

I wonder what's for lunch. Ahh, I'll figure it out when I pick a restaurant.

Reklaw

Originally posted by teddyboy420

Originally posted by Reklaw
I don't think he has to even look for something else but that something else would be presented to him. With his job history at Blizzard I bet plenty of gamecompany's might even be linning up to get him.

Of course they are lining up to get him. The man was the lead designer of vanilla WoW and BC, in terms of sales those two games sold what, something like a combined 50 MILLION (rounded for effect, the real number is something like 45 million as of 2013)copies worldwide, let alone the 100+ million subscribers WoW has had. Those are staggering numbers, in terms of sales it has outsold nearly every other AAA release during it's lifetime. Those are the kinds of numbers publishers cream their drawers over, and it's almost guaranteed that he will be getting some epic numbers thrown at him left and right, if it hasn't already started. The real question is if he'll take any of those offers, or if he'll do his own thing via crowd-funding, or some other route. It has to be taken into consideration that when he joined Blizzard it was still BLIZZARD, not Acti-Blizzard or w/etf they call themselves now, so maybe that's what pushed him out the door, or maybe not.

All that being said, just b/c the man caught the equivalent of Dark Energy in a bottle once certainly doesn't mean he'll be able to do it again. I am kind of of the opinion that we won't see another WoW until the experience of games themselves changes significantly. But hopefully he, and everyone else, will realize that and won't put such crazy expectations on his next game. I have a feeling that won't be the case though, and his next project will be touted as the second coming by some.

Fully agree on your last part. We have seen this many time no need to name those developers because I think we all know some pioneers that never accomplished close to or similar effect as when they first did it.

simsalabim77

Clearly, he left because WoW is dying. DUH! 

azzamasin

Originally posted by Scypheroth
GOOD STUFF! maybe he can find a diffrent company n make a vanilla wow like game again...modern wow is compleat shit

Disagree.  Vanilla WoW is what contributed to shitty games we have now.  We need someone to go back to UO/AC/EQ levels of diversity.

Foobarx

What you did x number of years ago really means squat from an employer's perspective, they only look at what you've done lately because that's who you are now.

I'm betting Carbine... it's where his brothers landed.

Phry

Or just maybe he took a good look at his bank balance one morning and thought 'stuff it im 44 and loaded, lets go for early retirement'

doodphace

Originally posted by simsalabim77
Clearly, he left because WoW is dying. DUH! 

WoW is at pretty much around the same subscriber numbers as it was during most of BC, hes most definitly leaving because the game is a former shell of its sub numbers when he was leading it

FelixMajor

I hope he continues to develop something great, and I hope this allows for a fresh, new take to come into the WoW dev team as well.

aesperus

Originally posted by Ortwig

Lead designer of vanilla WoW and Burning Crusade is moving on.  What say you?

http://wow.joystiq.com/2014/07/03/rob-pardo-is-leaving-blizzard/

He's probably tired of working on the same stuff for almost 2 decades.

Sometimes it's just time to move on. New projects, new ideas. You don't stay creative by doing the same things over & over.