Did anyone stay in the WoW team from all the original folks back from 2004 until today?? I mean this in a way of people that we might know so devs,game directors,designers and soo on…the last person i heard of was Alex Afrasiabi or whatever his name is,but even he i think left,now im not sure if he left just the WoW team or the whole Blizzard…I know alot were just thrown around different Blizzard games after some time but im curious if someone stayed with actual WoW team this whole time
The majority aren’t working on WoW anymore because of two reasons:
1 - The game was successful and some decision-makers in Blizzard thought: “Mhm yeah these people are quite good. Let’s order them to work on other games instead of letting them continue working on their masterpiece!”
2 - Blizzard is growing more greedy and some decisions aren’t very welcomed by the employees. Long story short, they quit.
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yeah i know most if not all quit or were moved to other games 
Meanwhile, other companies: “Oh nice these employees are successful! Allow them to work more on their projects. They deserved it.”
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i know right…kinda sad what happened to all the OGs
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- Working on the same thing for 20 years is not all that usual anyway especially in this industry. Doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the product changing.
This guy:
ArtStation - Jimmy Lo
And this guy:
ArtStation - Gary Platner
(just because Artstation is cool)
And more. A lot of Blizzard’s general departments have some long-time veterans. I mean, Glenn Stafford wrote music for Shadowlands and he’s been at Blizzard since its inception and worked on WoW from day 1. And the same could be said for some of the programmers, producers, cinematics team, and so on. A legend in the cinematics team – Matthew Mead – can be credited to just about every cinematic from Diablo II to Vanilla WoW and Shadowlands and Overwatch and the rest.
But it depends on what folks you “know”. 
Reckon all the original devs are gone.
true true,hahaha well said,oh yeah i know about Glenn Stafford,hes a legend on his own right,i remember playing Warcraft 2 way before WoW even began and he made music for that game aswell,mind you that was like 95 
Its nice to see some people still there kicking it
I would say that a lot of them are still working at Blizzard, but not necessarily filling the same roles as they did in Vanilla WoW. A guy like Michael Heiberg who was a Game Designer for World of Warcraft in 2004 is today a Principal Game Designer at Blizzard. So that’s just a natural job progression over 16 odd years.
like i said before,the people that most WoW players knew/know are probably gone from WoW team yea working on other things in the company or just left it
Most of the OGs left to different projects or left company as they were burned out. For how long can you design the same game - that big especially.
Ranks have been shaken up for sure,while some held their high positions for literally decades (Chris Metzen,Afrasiabi) some werent so lucky…i really wish Metzen never left Blizz,but i think hes a happier man now and its for his own good that he did
Metzen was responsible for story but I’m not sure if he was really a dev. First Game Director was Jeff Kaplan who got moved to Project Titan (later Overwatch)
Hmm in his wiki it states that he was Game Designer at some point so i guess thats true,but yeah hes most known for being the Story and Franchise Development guy,he was just an overall loveable guy by many since he created fictional universes for Diablo,Starcraft and Warcraft,and not to mention his voice acting skills 
Technically WoW didn’t have a Game Director until WotLK where it was Jeff Kaplan.
Before that they used the Lead Game Designer position, which for Vanilla WoW was Allen Adham and Rob Pardo.
And then for TBC it was Rob Pardo and Jeff Kaplan.
And then in WotLK they distinguished between the responsibilities in the titles and Jeff Kaplan become Game Director and Tom Chilton become Lead Game Designer.
And I think people often miss that distinction these days when they talk about Ion Hazzikostas – who’s the current Game Director – because they perceive him more as Lead Game Designer, likely because those titles were more blurred in the past. 
Wrong. According to Ghostcrawler - Jeff was first Game Director and he was changed for Tom Chilton in Wrath. Ghostcrawler took some of his duties as lead designer. Basically the role of Jeff was split between them. Then when GC left someone else took it and the role of GD was then changed in Legion for Ion when Tom Chilton decided to move to deferent (secret project).
Actually I’m not sure if Rob Pardo wasn’t responsible for GC work before he became lead designer.
This is actually a really simple question to answer:
First you look through the credits of vanilla
Then you look through the credits of Shadowlands
Then you compare the two. For any names that match, confirm if they are the same person.
And there’s your answer.
I cba to do it right now, personally, but that’s how I’d do it.
I think you’re mixing things up or I didn’t explain myself very well.
When Blizzard sets out to make World of Warcraft it is Rob Pardo and Allen Adham who are responsible for the game’s design, hence they are credited as Lead Designers.
Beyond that, it is even Rob Pardo himself who recruits Jeff Kaplan to work on WoW, because they were both EverQuest players.
And Jeff Kaplan is then hired as Game Designer, alongside Tom Chilton and others.
Blizzard don’t have a Game Director position originally. They have a Team Lead who is Mike Kern, which is probably the closest to what a Game Director does today.
In WotLK Jeff Kaplan does become Game Director, and that’s the first time Blizzard uses that title for WoW – likely because the scale of the project had grown so much that the organizational structure needed to expand.
And Tom Chilton becomes Lead Game Designer.
Allen Adham left Blizzard shortly after WoW was released and Rob Pardo basically went back to his role as Vice President of Game Design, sort of overseeing all of Blizzard’s projects.
And then in Cataclysm Jeff Kaplan leaves the team and Tom Chilton becomes Game Director.
So you’re not wrong, but I think it’s an important detail to point out that the super early design of WoW is very driven by Rob Pardo and Allen Adham. WoW wasn’t run by Jeff Kaplan from day 1. 
And then we got J.Allen Brack coming outta nowhere brushing everyone aside for that President role