Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street swaps WOW for LOL
He's having a Riot.
Star Blizzard developer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street has been hired by League of Legends maker Riot Games as joint lead game designer with Ryan Morello.
Street, former lead systems designer on World of Warcraft, was often seen defending class balance changes in the game's vociferous official forums. It's that kind of seniority and leadership Riot appears to have been looking for.
"League's a huge game and there's a lot to do," wrote Morello (via USgamer). "[Street is] actually some much-needed help on the leadership side - it's just too much for any one person to handle and make the progress I'd like to see.
"We'll be dividing up some of the effort on leading it, but other than making sure more things have support, the teams are pretty unchanged from who's doing what."
Street left Blizzard back in November, having spent five years there. World of Warcraft will be 10 years old this coming November.
Riot will have its hands full competing with multiplayer online battle arena games Dota 2 and Blizzard's upcoming Heroes of the Storm. Does it have an ace up its sleeve?
In October we discovered that Riot had a card game called League of Legends: Supremacy well into development but never announced. Riot boss Marc Merrill explained that the studio was "always working on a variety of new ideas ... that may never see the light of day".
Or will it? Blizzard's Hearthstone card game has been building an enviable amount of momentum while in closed beta, and now Riot has a key Blizzard thinker in Greg Street, even if he didn't have much personally to do with the game.