UPDATED 15:11 EDT / AUGUST 03 2015

NEWS

Where did Bashiok go after leaving World of Warcraft? Probably Wildstar [UPDATED]

Last week, Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. employee and Community Manager for the massively multiplayer online (MMO) game World of Warcraft Micah “Bashiok” Whipple tendered his resignation to hundreds of replies on the WoW forums. There he announced that he would be leaving his employer to pursue other opportunities.

Today, Bashiok tweeted under his personal, non-Blizzard, Twitter account under the hashtag #FirstDay. Astute viewers easily spotted a particular plush creature sitting on his car’s dash.

The strange plush critter visible in the photo is called a rowsdower—and it’s a creature native to Carbine Studio, Inc.’s MMO game Wildstar.

Update: Bashiok has now added a tweet to his @michawhipple account stating that he has joined NCSoft Corporation, publisher for Wildstar, as Senior Content Manager.

NCSoft is also best known as the publisher for Blade & SoulLineage 2, Aion, and Guild Wars 2–and is also the publisher of now-closed City of Heroes. Carbine Studios is a subsidiary of NCSoft as developer of WildStar, and is the only developer listed in Bashiok’s tweet.

Bashiok, Blizzard Community Manager 2003-2015

Bashiok's avatar from the World of Warcraft forums, via Blizzard

Bashiok’s avatar from the World of Warcraft forums, via Blizzard.

The Wildstar community is receiving a veteran of the community management industry as Bashiok has been with World of Warcraft for over 12 years.

He started his career at Blizzard posting in the US World of Warcraft forums as Drysc before spending a tour of duty in the Diablo 3 community and changing his forum name to Bashiok. He eventually moved back to the World of Warcraft forums and the name stayed.

Bashiok’s avatar in the forums looks like a haunted tree from World of Warcraft’s Felwood: jagged, gaping mouth carved into the trunk, neon-green glowing eyes, and sinister branches.

In his resignation post, Bashiok posted his thanks for the time he spent with the Blizzard community.

“I began working at Blizzard way back in October of 2003, and every day of my experience here has been shared with you, the players,” he writes, “and content creators, artists, bloggers, AddOn authors, podcasters, streamers, forum trolls, and— man, anyone remember the old Off-Topic forum back in the day? That place was just absolutely cuckoo bananas.”

Bashiok from Diablo 3, via the Diablo Wiki at Wikia.

Bashiok from Diablo 3, via the Diablo Wiki at Wikia.

His time with Blizzard has left behind several digital artifacts including a boss enemy in Diablo 3 named after him as well as a draenei character in the Exodar’s Crystal Hall in World of Warcraft.

Image credit: Micah Whipple, via Twitter.

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