World of Warcraft designer Ghostcrawler to depart Blizzard

Long-standing lead systems designer on World of Warcraft Greg ‘Ghostcrawler’ Street is to leave Blizzard Entertainment, he revealed on the game’s forums.

“An opportunity has come my way, and I have made the very tough decision to move on from Blizzard," Street wrote. “I wanted to thank all of you for being a part of this grand quest.

“I have said a hundred times that having passionate gamers, including the angry ones, is a far better place to be than having a community that doesn’t care. You all care. Like us, you want the game to be the best that it can be. So I ask you to keep on providing your feedback. I promise (and I rarely promise!) that the developers care very much about what you have to say.”

Street joined Blizzard in February 2008. He has become one of the most prominent public faces of the World of Warcraft team, with more than 70,000 Twitter followers.

In his role as lead systems designer, Street and his team were tasked with building and changing the core gameplay of the fantasy MMO, including classes, game mechanics, items, trade skills and UI.

Before joining Blizzard, Street worked for almost a decade at Ensemble Studios as a designer on several Age of Empires titles and lead designer on Age of Empires 3.