Click his picture above to go to his farewell thread on the official forums.
Even though he announced it last Wednesday I decided to wait a few days before commenting on it. I wanted to see how the “vocal minority”, as they call themselves would react to the news of his departure.
Unsurprisingly, they celebrated as word quickly spread.
It’s as I said in this blog post back in August: Gamers are a toxin to the very industry that relies on them.
As a few folks on MMO-Champion pointed out, Ghostcrawler brought Blizzard fans into the devolopment room with the depth and detail you wouldn’t expect to see from the most financially successful MMO in history. Whoever his successor is, I wouldn’t expect them to be as open about decisions being made as Ghostcrawler was and that’s assuming they decide to talk publicly about it.
Let me back up a moment and explain for those who don’t know who Greg Street was. He was the Leader Designer for World of Warcraft. He started working for Blizzard during the Wrath of the Lich King era though he has been playing WoW sinc Vanilla. It was that “old school” background and the fact that he spent so much time playing the game before he took the job that made him universally liked by the WoW community in the beginning.
What happened?
Ghostcrawler took on the role of spokesman for WoW is what happened. You know the saying “Dont shoot the messenger?” Well, this is the internet. Folks don’t care. He was blamed for every little thing the vocal minority didn’t like. The irony is he alone doesn’t do the decision-making. He’s part of a team. And 9 out of 10 times decisions made are out of his hands. Yes he had an influential role in four expansions (Wrath of the Lich King, Cataclysm, Mists of Pandaria and presumably Warlords of Draenor) but he was under no obligation to go public with what was in the works behind the scenes.
One thing the Vanilla/TBC Lovers never bring up is the fact during that era there was little to no communication between the devlopment team and its customers/fans outside BlizzCon. You didn’t know anything about any new content until it was announced in the patch notes or someone datamined the info. Ghostcrawler changed all that and he was under no obligation to do it. I’m sure he believed that because we all pay the same subscription every month Blizzard is obligated to let its consumers know what was being planned for the product they were investing so much time and money into.
Those times are likely history now. We don’t know what Ghostcrawler will be doing next but I wish him all the best.
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