After a decade of overseeing one of the biggest games ever made, World of Warcraft director Tom Chilton is leaving. The designer announced in a blog today that he is stepping down from the lead role on Blizzard’s massively multiplayer online role-playing game now that Legion, the latest (and greatest) expansion has launched. But Chilton isn’t done at Blizzard. He revealed that he is sticking with the company and is now working on something new. The director worked on Warcraft since 2004, and he was key to turning it into one of the most popular and lucrative hits in the history of the $99.6 billion gaming industry.
“It’s with a mix of excitement, sadness, and gratitude that I’m saying farewell to the WOW team and moving on to a new adventure within Blizzard,” Chilton wrote in a message on the Blizzard forums. “My personal journey working on WOW as Game Director is at an end, but my journey with Blizzard isn’t. I’ll still be here, but will be focusing on another project within the company.”
World of Warcraft was long Blizzard’s crown jewel, but it is entering the twilight of its life. It peaked in 2010 with 12 million subscribers, and it has since dwindled to less than half of that — although the publisher no longer releases the figures for how many people pay for a monthly membership. WOW still generates millions of dollars in revenue every month, but fans have still wondered whether Blizzard would replace it with something new. The studio was working on a new MMO called Titan, but it eventually canceled that project and repurposed many of the assets and ideas for the popular Overwatch shooter that launched in April.
