“I just sat there all day making stuff up, and it took off from there.” That is how Chris Metzen described his job to Edge in 2004, by which time he was Blizzard’s vice president of creative development. He had joined the company as an animator on a Super Nintendo superhero game. One night, around the start of Warcraft II, he stayed late and wrote three paragraphs on what might have happened between the first two games. That got him on to the team as a “designer”, a job nobody had yet defined, and his habit of making stuff up turned Warcraft’s war between two races into a world with a history, the setting that World of Warcraft later put online.
Fast facts
- Born: 1973.
- Company: Blizzard Entertainment, from around 1994 until 2016, and again from 2022.
- Started as: an animator on Justice League Task Force for the Super Nintendo.
- Writing: the background stories of Warcraft II and its expansion Beyond the Dark Portal; StarCraft; Warcraft III; continuity for World of Warcraft.
- Voice: Thrall, from Warcraft III (2002) on.
- Titles: vice president of creative development by 2004; creative adviser on the Warcraft series from December 2022, then its executive creative director.
Making stuff up
“I was probably the 15th employee,” Metzen told Edge. “I started on Justice League Task Force for the SNES as an animator.” Warcraft had been an unexpected success, and his three-paragraph summary got him moved to Warcraft II. “I think the bosses expected it would be making pie graphs, mechanical design, but I just sat there all day making stuff up.” They were not always pleased. “I remember the bosses telling me: ‘Dude, we need you doing pie graphs, no one cares about this and that — we just want gameplay.’ But over time we found people were responding to these geeky details, and it became part of who we are.”
He had grown up, he said, “with Dungeons & Dragons, as a Star Wars fan, as a comic fan, with their vast continuities”, and he wanted Blizzard’s games to work the same way: to “construct more of a universe for them, and keep people thinking about them when they’re not playing”. As Edge told it, Warcraft II’s story was narrated, StarCraft’s played out through its characters during the game, and the method was refined for Warcraft III. In the design meetings everyone invented units and powers; Metzen’s role, as he put it, was to be “the guy that plays goalie on whether ideas are appropriate to this race, culture, mechanic”.
Not every idea was his. StarCraft’s frontier-western flavour came from the cinematics department, and he admitted he “didn’t like it at first”: he had “this big space opera idea”, and they had “backwoods, beer-guzzling yokels”. He came round, and drew a lesson from it: the contentious ideas were the ones that made the team “step up creatively”.
Warcraft’s keeper
By 1997 Metzen, who had written the background stories of Warcraft II and Beyond the Dark Portal, was leading Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans, an adventure game about a young orc called Thrall, raised as a slave by humans. Computer Gaming World quoted him as lead designer: after two defeats, the orcs “are not doing very well”. Blizzard had cast the actor Clancy Brown as Thrall. The game was cancelled, but Thrall survived into Warcraft III (2002), this time with Metzen as his voice, and has been in the series ever since.
When Computer Gaming World previewed World of Warcraft in 2001, it called Metzen the “keeper of the arcane flame” of all Warcraft continuity. “The simple fact is that Warcraft is our flagship gig,” he said, and the look of the online world mattered to him: “We were looking for something more iconic; we wanted a level of mightiness not found in other games. And that’s what this game is about: mighty dudes doing great deeds.” He described the plan as “an amusement park motif”: the team’s job would be “to keep the lines short and keep changing up the rides”. By 2007 he was meeting Legendary Pictures at BlizzCon to talk about a Warcraft film.
He also voiced other characters in the online game, among them King Varian Wrynn and Ragnaros the Firelord. His last project before he left was the world of Overwatch (2016).
Leaving and coming back
Metzen announced his retirement on 12 September 2016, after nearly 23 years. His farewell message said he was going home to “the one thing that matters most to me in all the world—my family”, and that he was “not going to some other company or starting up new projects”. In a later interview he described a different side of it: nonstop anxiety and panic attacks under the pressure of that year’s releases, as Kotaku summarised it in 2022.
Later he set up Warchief Gaming, a tabletop games company, with Mike Gilmartin; it published a role-playing setting called Auroboros: Coils of the Serpent. In December 2022 Blizzard announced that he was back, as a creative adviser on the Warcraft leadership team, starting with World of Warcraft. In September 2023 he became the series’ executive creative director.
Sources
- “Words of Warcraft”, interview with Chris Metzen, Edge issue 141, October 2004, p. 72: VP of creative development; the 15th employee; Justice League Task Force; the three-paragraph summary and Warcraft II; pie graphs; his influences; narration and characters in Warcraft II, StarCraft and Warcraft III; the goalie quote; the StarCraft cinematics. Reprinted in Edge (Australian edition) issue 2, November 2004, p. 70.
- Computer Gaming World issue 154, May 1997, p. 66: Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans (lead designer Chris Metzen; Thrall; Clancy Brown cast as Thrall’s voice).
- PC Player (Germany), February 1998, pp. 32–33: Warcraft Adventures (Metzen as writer of the Warcraft 2 and Beyond the Dark Portal background stories, in charge of its production).
- Computer Gaming World issue 208, November 2001, pp. 72–86: World of Warcraft preview (“keeper of the arcane flame”; “flagship gig”; “mighty dudes doing great deeds”; the amusement park).
- Edge issue 180, October 2007, p. 51: BlizzCon 2007, Metzen with Legendary Pictures on the Warcraft film; his title.
- Javy Gwaltney, “Chris Metzen Retires From Blizzard”, Game Informer, 12 September 2016 (web, secondary): his farewell message; Overwatch as his last project. https://gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2016/09/12/chris-metzen-blizzard-retire.aspx
- Luke Plunkett, Kotaku, 15 December 2022 (web, secondary): his return; his earlier account of anxiety and panic attacks. https://kotaku.com/blizzard-chris-metzen-returns-wow-starcraft-diablo-1849901021
- Evgeny Obedkov, “Chris Metzen returns to Blizzard”, Game World Observer, 16 December 2022 (web, secondary): John Hight’s announcement; Warchief Gaming with Mike Gilmartin; Auroboros. https://gameworldobserver.com/2022/12/16/chris-metzen-returns-to-blizzard-creative-advisor-world-of-warcraft
- Wikipedia, “Chris Metzen” (accessed October 2026) (web, secondary): birth date; voice roles, including Thrall, Varian Wrynn and Ragnaros; executive creative director from September 2023. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Metzen
- Warcraft Wiki, “Chris Metzen” (accessed October 2026) (web, secondary): his voice roles as Thrall from Warcraft III, Varian Wrynn and Ragnaros. https://warcraft.wiki.gg/wiki/Chris_Metzen