Omar Gonzalez has been with Blizzard since 2003 and is regarded as the “father of WoW Classic“. However, he has now left the company and joined one of the studios founded by former Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime. There are already numerous Blizzard veterans there.
What happened? Kevin Jordan was with Blizzard from 2003 to 2010 and spoke about his time at the WoW developer in a livestream on Twitch. He also mentioned Omar Gonzalez.
It is said that Gonzalez left Blizzard after 18 years and moved to Secret Door. This is one of two studios of the game company Dreamhaven. Dreamhaven was founded by Mike Morhaime, the former head of Blizzard.
Morhaime left Blizzard back in 2019 and was responsible for the three Warcraft titles, Diablo 1 and 2, as well as World of Warcraft.
We have embedded the clip with Jordan’s statement here:
Father of WoW Classic is now part of the “new Blizzard”
Who is Omar Gonzalez? Gonzalez started his career at Blizzard in 2003 as a QA analyst for Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne and World of Warcraft. Over the years he was promoted to Technical Lead for WoW.
In 2019, Ion Hazzikostas, the current Game Director of WoW, revealed in an interview that Gonzalez played an important role in the implementation of WoW Classic, which is why he is also known as the “father of WoW Classic” (via YouTube):
One of them, an engineer named Omar Gonzalez, who is now in the Classic team, attempted to take the modern client and modern server and teach them how to interpret the old 1.12 Classic data. He locked himself away for a few weeks and came out with something that was a prototype.
It was very rough, contained tons of bugs, the world was not fully rendered, but it was the original Classic world, pre-Cataclysm. He had the original abilities and talents and we knew there was a lot of work to do, but we realized for the first time: “We can make this happen.”
Ion Hazzikostas in an interview with xDlate
Omar Gonzalez had a significant influence on the overall development of WoW. There are numerous NPCs and items named after him, including the Master Craftsman Omarion in the Eastern Plaguelands (via WoWHead).
Where has Gonzalez moved to? Dreamhaven is a new game company founded by Mike Morhaime and supported by many former Blizzard employees, including:
- Jason Chayes, former Executive Producer of Hearthstone
- Dustin Bowder, former Game Director of StarCraft II and Heroes of the Storm
- Ben Thompson, former Creative Director at Hearthstone
- Chris Sigaty, former Executive Producer for Hearthstone, StarCraft II and Heroes of the Storm
- Eric Dodds, former Game Director for Hearthstone and Game Designer of StarCraft and World of Warcraft
They are working in two different studios, Moonshot Games and Secret Door, on titles yet to be revealed. However, these are said to “bring players together,” indicating a focus on multiplayer experiences.
Will there be a new Blizzard? Shortly after the founding of Dreamhaven, Morhaime gave an interview. In it, he revealed that an environment where “sustainable creativity and innovation can be cultivated” is important. He emphasized words like passion and creativity of the developers.
Dreamhaven is said to have no rush to find sponsors and make money. Instead, Morhaime stressed that it is important to keep “control over the company’s decisions.”
These are exactly some of the criticisms that some (former) fans of Blizzard have:
- Since this company became part of Activision, in their eyes, only decisions in favor of profit are being made, not in the interest of the players.
- This also leads to a harsh austerity program that has demanded several layoffs in recent years.
- Projects such as the remaster Warcraft 3 Reforged started catastrophically, while Blizzard used to stand for quality.
- Many core fans are also critical of the development towards mobile games.
Many of them hope that out of the new company, something like the “new Blizzard” could develop: Morhaime’s new studio sounds like “Blizzard before Activision intervened”.
