Bill Roper worked at Blizzard and Blizzard North for a decade, before leaving in early 2003. He was a producer, designer, and did extensive voice work on titles including Warcraft II, Starcraft, Diablo II, Warcraft III, and various expansion packs. In addition to production work behind the scenes, Bill was probably the best-known Blizzard employee, thanks to his extensive PR work. He was interviewed thousands of times and was the chief spokesperson during most of Blizzard's publicity efforts.
After leaving Blizzard, Bill and numerous other ex-Blizzard North employees co-founded Flagship Studios, where they produced Hellgate: London and Mythos. After Flagship closed down, Bill joined Cryptic Studios, where he became one of the producers of Champions Online. Bill gave a short run-down of his career in a November 2008 interview.[1]
- Q: How long have you worked in gaming, and what did you do before Champions Online?
- Bill Roper: I’ve been in the industry for just over 14 years. I started by doing voice-over and music on Blackthorne for Blizzard Entertainment and then moved onto Warcraft: Orcs & Humans to create the world fiction, write the missions, put together the manual and basically everything and anything else they asked of me. Over the next 9 years I worked on the Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo franchises and did everything from design to production to working with outside developers and leading internal strike teams to press, marketing and eventually becoming a vice president.
- In 2003, I started Flagship Studios (and later Ping0) with the core team of people that created Diablo and we put out our first game, Hellgate: London, in October 2007. We also were working on a casual online MMO called Mythos when we had to close the studio in July 2008.
- I’m looking forward not only to bringing what I’ve learned from the numerous successes I’ve worked on to Cryptic and Champions Online, but also what I learned from the failures.