Chris Metzen returns to the World of Warcraft team as a ‘creative advisor’

December 15, 2022 2:27 PM

Who had this on the “biggest surprise” bingo card? Blizzard has apparently rehired Chris Metzen to work on World of Warcraft and its extended universe.

“It is with great joy that I announce Chris Metzen has joined the Warcraft Leadership Team as Creative Advisor,” Warcraft General Manager John Hight announced this afternoon. “Chris’s focus initially will be on World of Warcraft, then his work will expand to other projects across this growing franchise. 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, of course, was Senior Vice President of Story and Franchise Development for Blizzard when he retired in 2016, at which point he said he would not be starting up new projects but would instead be focusing on his family; at the time, he said he’d felt pressure to “out-perform” with the Overwatch project and suffered from anxiety and panic attacks. Five years later, he returned to the scene to Kickstart a Dungeons & Dragons campaign. He was last in the news around here in 2021, when he apologized for the role he played in Blizzard’s “culture that fostered harassment, inequality, and indifference.”

So happy to share that @ChrisMetzen has come home. He will join us as a creative advisor for the Warcraft franchise as we dream even bigger. #Warcraft https://t.co/5r7ozHI8D2

— Holly Longdale (@TheWindstalker) December 15, 2022