On April 5, 2025, the death of William ‘Bill’ Petras was announced. A close friend and long-time colleague of the deceased made this known. Petras was the artistic director of World of Warcraft and Overwatch at Blizzard.
Who was Petras? Bill Petras was the artistic director of World of Warcraft at Blizzard Entertainment for 8 years, from 1997 to 2005, significantly influencing the style of WoW. Before that, Petras worked on Starcraft at Blizzard.
In 2005, Petras left Blizzard to work as a co-founder of the developer studio Red5 on the MMO Firefall. In 2010, Petras returned to Blizzard and was the artistic director of Overwatch and Overwatch 2 until 2021.
Former Employees Mourn
The news of Petras’s unexpected death reached the public through a LinkedIn post by Harley D. Huggins, a long-time friend and colleague of Petras. They had been good friends for about 28 years and started at Blizzard in the same week. Huggins writes:
“I will miss our regular, long, rambling conversations about life, game development, games, art, comics, toys, monster movies, and Conan. He will be greatly missed by me and all who knew him.“
Many other former employees of Petras are mourning their former colleague. Petras’s former companion at Blizzard, James Waugh, finds emotional words:
“The loss of William Petras breaks my heart. Billy was someone I worked closely with during the transition from Titan to Overwatch, and he was an important partner in the short films and comics and building the world and all those things. He was incredible. Kind. Generous and sincere. He was the kind of person who built trust immediately, and you knew he really cared. […]. The industry has lost one of its masters, and the world has lost a great person.” – via LinkedIn
With Petras’s death, the world of gaming has lost a person who played a crucial role in what is perhaps the most important MMORPG in history. A game that has a long history of its own: The story of World of Warcraft to date – all the lore summarized
