Technical Director Monte Krol Departs Blizzard Entertainment After 23 Years

wowhead.com:

Technical Director Monte Krol announced his departure from Blizzard Entertainment today, after nearly 23 years with the studio. Designer of many of the tools used by developers to create and maintain World of Warcraft, he's lent his voice and name to several aspects of the game, from the Krol Blade to the memorable Goblin voice line, «Time is money, friend!» Computer Engineering graduate Monte Krol began his career at Blizzard Entertainment after a friend introduced him to Diablo, becoming hooked and ordering the studio's next game, StarCraft, before even seeing it.

While looking for a new job in 1999, the original Warcraft III trailer released, leading him to fly to California for an interview, hiring on in October of 2000 without even knowing what game he would be working on, believing it to be StarCraft 2, as World of Warcraft was still a secret at that point. He was later loaned to Team 1 (internal development, which took over StarCraft 2 development) for six and a half years before formally returning to Team 2 (World of Warcraft).

Working on virtually every Blizzard project between Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and Diablo IV, as well as World of Warcraft and each of its expansions, Krol rose to the position of Lead Software Engineer in 2007, where he and his team created and maintained the programs that the rest of the development team use to build World of Warcraft, most notably WoWEdit — the massive control program used to create environments, texture the ground, place assets and doodads, position NPCs, and so on. In 2020, Krol took on the role of Technical Director for World of Warcraft: Arclight Rumble, leading the team of engineers building the upcoming mobile game.