Chris Metzen has returned to Blizzard Entertainment to work on World of Warcraft

Chris Metzen has returned to Blizzard Entertainment after retiring from the company in 2016.

As announced in a Tweet by John Hight, the general manager for Warcraft, the veteran will return as a creative advisor for Warcraft’s leadership.

“Chris’s focus initially will be on World of Warcraft, then his work will expand to other projects across this growing franchise.”

Metzen retired from Blizzard after being at the company for 23 years.

“Chris was one of the original team members working on the Warcraft universe back when it began in 1994, and we are so happy to be reuniting him with the world he helped create,” concluded Hight’s statement.

Metzen worked across Warcraft, Diablo and Starcraft during his career and also voiced a number of characters across Blizzard franchises.

World of Warcraft: Dragonflight, the latest expansion to the long-running MMO, was released in November.

World of Warcraft and Blizzard as a whole could soon be under Microsoft should the $69 billion deal is completed successfully.

However, the deal, which would see Microsoft take control of gaming’s largest third party, is facing roadblocks.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is suing to block the proposed deal. 

An official statement made by the FTC alleges that the deal would not only give Microsoft an upper hand in the console market, but also in other areas such as subscription gaming and cloud gaming.

It claims that “the $69 billion deal, Microsoft’s largest ever and the largest ever in the video gaming industry, would enable Microsoft to suppress competitors to its Xbox gaming consoles and its rapidly growing subscription content and cloud-gaming business”.

According to the FTC, the complaint cites previous examples of Microsoft acquiring other “valuable gaming content” and using it to suppress competition from rivals, pointing out its acquisition of ZeniMax, parent company of Bethesda, as a notable example.