Blizzard legend Gary Platner is leaving Blizzard after 23 years
You know his face from somewhere, you saw him often at BlizzCon, but Blizzard’s Principal Exterior Level Designer Gary Platner was never a stage pig like Chris Metzen or Samwise Didier. He was employed by Blizzard for over 20 years and is literally responsible for the “world” in World of Warcraft. After 23 years he is now leaving the company.
He’s just a Blizzard OG like Chris Metzen or Samwise Didier, only this Blizzard legend usually stayed in the background – Gary Platner. His work on World of Warcraft was just as important as that of the others. As the Principal Exterior Level Designer, he has created all of the exterior areas that WoW players have walked through for the last 20 years.
After 23 years at Blizzard Entertainment, Gary Platner is leaving the company. To say goodbye, he was photographed again in front of the iconic orc statue with colleague Matt Heyman and posted on linkedin some pictures of how the statue was built at that time. In his post he thanks Blizzard for 23 wonderful years and it was an honor to work on WoW.
He also thanks Duane Stinnet at the end, who hired him for Project Nomad back then. Like us today thanks to John Staats’ developer diary know, that failed project basically became World of Warcraft. It is not yet known where the Blizzard legend will go next or if he simply wants to retire.
Are the areas of Dragonflight finished externally?
In addition to homage to Gary Platner’s many years of work on Blizzard’s MMO, the above Reddit post in the WoW forum is now discussing whether this means that work on the outside world of the Dragon Islands (the area of the upcoming expansion WoW: Dragonflight) is already complete.
As Principal Exterior Level Designer, Gary Platner will certainly not have missed the opportunity to complete his last work after Vanilla WoW and eight expansions. The chances are good, because the developers at Blizzard want to release Dragonflight this year, in just over five months at the latest. One can only guess how far the dragon islands have been built up to now. Leaks from the internal alpha so far pictures only show screenshots from the capital Valdrakken.
Reference-www.buffed.de