blizzard David Kim, Diablo 4 Lead Systems Designer Moves to WoW

[Starym 2185]

 

It seems David Kim is the Jack of all trades in Blizzard, as he's once again moved to a new franchise within the company! The Diablo 4 Lead Systems Designer, who was very front and center at the BlizzCon D4 announcement, has moved to the position of Principal Game Designer for World of Warcraft:

As you can see from the above, Kim has been moving around a lot, with his longest stint coming from StarCraft 2, where he started at Blizzard back in 2007, jumping in to Heroes of the Storm, back to SC2 and then Diablo 4 most recently.

On the D4 side of things, we're not quite sure what this means, as it seems unlikely the job was "done" and so Kim could move on, and it's a lot more likely he was needed in WoW due to Shadowlands crunch (as he started the job back in September), since it was all hands on deck to get the expansion out the door. It seems likely that Kim will stay in WoW for a while at least, and it's unclear if he'll be returning to Diablo, which doesn't seem like a good thing for the 4th installment, but as it's still a long way away, it might not be that big of an issue. As spotted by Rhykker, his replacement on the D4 team seems to be  Joe Piepiora, who was promoted from within the D4 team.

On the WoW side of things, some players have been complaining about the game having moved towards Diablo systems in the past, with World Quests and especially the RNG nature of loot, so they might not be too happy with this particular move, but Kim has been very good at balance, coming from a very heavy StarCraft background. The Principal Game Designer job title itself means working on the core systems, and if we had to hazard a guess, we'd say classes and their balancing, whether via gear or other systems, might be one of Kim's focuses.

Source.

[Bobbis 115]

AS long as he sticks with his SC roots, and doesn't funnel more Diablo style stuff into the game, all good. The part where he has a good history of balancing things is a good sign. Best of luck to the guy, going to need it!

[Monlyth 57]

Things seem to be so chaotic at Blizzard nowadays. We're constantly hearing about people getting moved to different projects or leaving the company.

[Baharok 113]

18 minutes ago, Monlyth said:

Things seem to be so chaotic at Blizzard nowadays. We're constantly hearing about people getting moved to different projects or leaving the company.

Actually it is only because you read about Blizzard, but in fact its the normal case in any big company for people in keypositions, since they get experience in different parts of the company. (my experience)

[Aerisot 2]

So D4's lead System Designer left before the game is even finished? wth?

[Morcalivan 86]

2 hours ago, Aerisot said:

So D4's lead System Designer left before the game is even finished? wth?

Finished developing and testing maybe. Design could be over and done with outside of expansions.