Tom Chilton has officially announced that he is leaving his position as director of World of Warcraft after 12 years. He joined Blizzard in 2004 as a senior game designer, then went on to become director in 2010 coinciding with the release the Cataclysm expansion. Cataclysm was an expansion that brought WOW’s concurrent active users to highest number ever recorded. So it seems fitting that Chilton’s last highlight as a director is the release of the Legion expansion, which saw a boost in the number of active users to what it was in 2010. Talk about going out with a bang! I can only hope to leave my job with the same amount of staplers I had, when I came in.

So what does this mean for Blizzard and the WOW community? Stepping in for Chilton, is Ion Hazzikostas who has been with Blizzard since 2008 as encounter designer and then Assistant Game Director. So by all accounts, it seems the community is in good hands. Blizzard has not given any details as to what this “new project” is, however, Chilton’s expertise is largely focused on MMO’s. He used to work on Ultima Online for a few years before arriving at Blizzard.

Even though Blizzard hasn’t offered any details about any MMO in the works, I can feel the collective hive mind of everyone reading this and going “But what about Titan?” a game that was in development for 7 years and subsequently cancelled in 2014. Even though this was officially cancelled, gamers can argue that the cancellation of Titan wasn’t necessarily failure. Considering that out of the wreckage of that project they were able salvage pieces that where later used in Overwatch, which has been a gigantic success in the gaming community.

Considering their record of churning out quality games over just plain quantity, Blizzard has managed to have one of the most positive reception from their player base throughout the years. They have grown this positive relation with their fans for a very long time and they are far from over.

We here at Don’t Feed the Gamers wish Chilton nothing but the best in all of his future endeavors. Now back to playing Legion.