The Devil Cries: Rob Pardo Pardos Ways With Blizzard
Blizz loses its chief creative officer
That headline might be confusing for some of you, so allow me to elaborate: Rob Pardo's been one of Blizzard's top designers for 17 years, making him - among many other things - one of Diablo's many daddies. So when I say the devil cries, I'm mostly referring to that. I'm sure he's blowing his 666 nostrils into a +44 WIS Hanky Of Wretched Despondency as we speak, the poor primeval force.
That, however, is only the beginning of Pardo's legendary ledger, which spans everything from the original StarCraft to Warcraft III to World of Warcraft to Diablo III. He's been everywhere (as lead designer or chief creative officer for a lot of it), worked on projects great and not-so-great. And now he's leaving.
Pardo wrote a lengthy farewell on the Blizzard forums:
"I’m looking forward to new challenges in my career, but I will always cherish the time I spent with you all and the amazing and collaborative teams at Blizzard. It was both satisfying and humbling, and it made me a better developer and a better person. I look forward to playing Blizzard games as a player for many years to come. Most important, now I have plenty of time to learn how to build a competitive Hearthstone deck."
"As to what I will be doing next, I don’t have an answer for you yet . . . but I will 'when it’s ready'. My priorities are to enjoy the summer with my family, play plenty of games, and think about what’s next. The game industry is such an exciting place right now with PC gaming thriving, the new consoles, mobile games, and virtual reality becoming an actual reality. It’s like having an empty quest log and going into a new zone for the first time."
Maybe he will Kickstart the spiritual successor to Warcraft III. Yes, I believe that is what he will do because that's what I want and it's pretty easy to will yourself into believing something at that point. For instance, Pardo's going-away post has nine paragraphs. Yeah, that's right: divisible by three. He also posted in the Warcraft section of the forums.
Oh, and if you do an "inspect element" on the page, the top line of html reads "http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml." W3? 1999? Warcraft III's first showing was in 1999 and there's no way that url redirects to "an international community that develops open standards to ensure the long-term growth of the Web" called W3C don't worry I checked lalalalalalalala can't hear you.