Overwatch and World of Warcraft art director Bill Petras has died

Bill Petras, a veteran of Blizzard Entertainment with a career spanning over 30 years in the games industry, has died. The news was shared to LinkedIn by Petras’ friend and colleague, former Blizzard cinematics director, Harley D. Huggins II. Petras is survived by his family, who are planning a celebration of life for Petras in the coming days.

Petras’ earliest recorded credits in the games industry were with developer GameTech in the early ’90s⁠—he’s credited on such deep cuts as Ripper, Star Crusader, and BloodNet. Petras’ first project with Blizzard Entertainment was the original StarCraft, where he was credited with storyboard, 3D, and cinematic art.

Petras notably served as art director on World of WarCraft for its original release in 2004. WoW iterated on Warcraft 3’s visual identity to create an extremely influential art style not only in videogames, but fantasy writ large: WoW’s DNA found its way into comics and tabletop, with both Dungeons & Dragons’ fourth edition and Pathfinder taking visual cues from the transformative MMO.

Petras left Blizzard in 2005 to co-found Red 5 Studios, but returned in 2010 and oversaw the art of yet another massively influential Blizzard game, Overwatch. In 2017, Petras gave a GDC talk about Overwatch’s art where he revealed that Torbjorn, of all characters, was one of the first, most crucial character designs the team set in place after scrapping the Titan MMO concept and pivoting to Overwatch.

“Billy and I started at Blizzard the same week and were close friends for 28 years,” Huggins wrote on LinkedIn. “I will miss our regular, long, rambling conversations about life, game dev, games, art, comic books, toys, monster movies and Conan. He will be deeply missed by me and all who knew him.” Huggins signed off with one quote from Thomas Campbell’s poem Hallowed Ground, and one from the legendary Hyperborean warrior himself: “I am Conan, and I am not afraid of death.”