Overwatch and World of Warcraft art director Bill Petras passed away

2025-04-06 20:55:20|Myriagame |source：minecraft skins

Bill Petras, a veteran of Blizzard Entertainment, passed away.He has more than 30 years of experience in the gaming industry.Petras’ friend and colleague and former Blizzard cutscene director Harley D. Huggins II shared the news on LinkedIn.Petras' family plans to hold a memorial service for Petras in the coming days.

Petras' first recorded work experience in the gaming industry was working for game developer GameTech in the early 1990s - he participated in relatively niche game projects such as The Tearer, Star Crusader and Blood Net.Petras' first project at Blizzard Entertainment was the first generation of StarCraft, in which he was responsible for storyboards, 3D design and cutscene art.

It is worth mentioning that Petras served as art director when World of Warcraft was initially released in 2004.World of Warcraft iterated on the visual style of Warcraft 3 to create an influential artistic style that has far-reaching influence not only in the field of video games, but also in the entire fantasy field: elements of World of Warcraft permeate comics and tabletop games, and Dungeons and Dragons, 4th edition and Trail Blazers draw visual inspiration from this transformative, massively multiplayer online game.

In 2005, Petras left Blizzard and co-founded Red 5 Studios, but returned to Blizzard in 2010 and oversees the art work of another influential game, Overwatch.In 2017, Petras delivered a speech on the art of Overwatch at the Game Developers Conference (GDC).In his speech, he revealed that after abandoning the concept of "Titans" massively multiplayer online game and turning to "Overwatch", Tobion's character was one of the first and most critical character designs the team determined.

"Billy (Billy, the nickname of Bill) and I joined Blizzard the same week, and we were close friends for 28 years. I will miss our casual and long daily conversations about life, game development, games, art, comic books, toys, monster movies and Conan the Barbarian. He will be missed deeply, and everyone who knows him." Huggins ends with a quote from Thomas Campbell's poem Hallowed Ground, and a quote from the legendary warrior Conan himself from the Northern Wastelands: "I am Conan, I am not afraid of death."

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