The art director of Overwatch and World of Warcraft, Bill Petras, died.
The news was shared by Harley D. Huggins II, former director of Blizzard film projects, who paid tribute to Petras on LinkedIn.
“Bill Petras, a legend of game development, has died unexpectedly. Billy was an incredibly talented artist who worked at Blizzard Entertainment for almost two decades,” said Huggins.
“He was immensely proud of the work he did there, especially as art director of World of Warcraft and Overwatch.”
“Billy and I started in Blizzard the same week and we were close friends for 28 years. I will miss our regular, long and divagant conversations about life, the development of the game, games, art, comics, toys, monster and Conan movies.
“It will surprise me deeply and everyone who knew him.”
Petras’ career began in the early 90s in PC titles such as Bloodnet and Star Crusader.
He joined Blizzard in 1997, working at Starcraft of 1998 and his expansion of the 1998 breeding war. Petras was an artist in the best -selling real -time strategy game, and his box and manual art are also attributed to him.
Petras would later work at the Warcraft III RTS, and then World of Warcraft, where he was responsible for the highly influential art direction of the MMO in its original launch in 2004.
Petras left Blizzard in 2005 to co -confound the Studio Red 5, which created the fall of Firing Mmo.
Later he returned to the company in 2010, working as an art director for the successful Shoot Overwatch, which emerged from the MMO Cancelado project, Titan. He remained in Blizzard until 2021.
