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Original World of Warcraft creative director Chris Metzen, who left Blizzard in 2016 (opens in new tab) after a 23-year career, is coming back. Warcraft franchise general manager John Hight revealed the big news on Twitter (opens in new tab), saying that Metzen has joined the “Warcraft Leadership Team” as creative advisor.
“Chris’s focus initially will be on World of Warcraft, then his work will expand to other projects across this growing franchise,” Hight wrote. “Chris was one of the original team members working on the Warcraft universe back when it began in 1994, and we are so happy to be reuniting him with the world he helped create.”
Metzen had a remarkable run at Blizzard, where he worked on the studio’s foundational games. Moby (opens in new tab)games lists his earlier credit as documentation and “manual illustrations” for the original Warcraft: Orcs and Humans; from there, he amassed writing, design, and production credits on the Warcraft sequels and World of Warcraft, as well as the Diablo games, StarCraft, Hearthstone, and Overwatch.
When Metzen left Blizzard in 2016, he was very near the top of the heap, holding the position of senior vice president of story and franchise development. And, unlike many of his Blizzard compatriots (like Ben Brode (opens in new tab), for instance), Metzen was not moving on to other things—he straight up retired.
He did eventually get back into the gaming business, with a tabletop RPG called Auroboros: Coils of the Serpents (opens in new tab) announced in 2021. Unfortunately, 2021 was also the year that Metzen apologized (opens in new tab) for failing to take action to halt widespread discrimination and sexual harassment at Activision Blizzard. Metzen hasn’t been publicly implicated in any wrongdoing, but said in July 2021 that he and others in leadership positions at Blizzard “failed too many people when they needed us because we had the privilege of not noticing, not engaging, not creating necessary space for the colleagues who needed us as leaders.”
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