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Mike O'Brien | |
|---|---|
| Occupations | President ofArenaNet (2000–2019) Programmer at ManaWorks (since 2019) |
Mike O'Brien is the former president and co-founder ofArenaNet and executive producer of its gamesGuild Wars andGuild Wars 2.[1] He led the design and content creation teams of the originalGuild Wars.[2]
Before co-founding ArenaNet, he worked as a company director and a lead programmer atBlizzard Entertainment where he developed the3D rendering engine ofWarcraft III: Reign of Chaos and led the development ofBattle.net. He also worked onWarcraft II: Tides of Darkness,Diablo andStarCraft, where he, among other things, designed and created theMPQ archives used in all Blizzard games after Diablo. Mike O'Brien was featured as one of the most influential people in thevideo game industry onPC Gamer's September 1999 cover story"Game Gods".
O'Brien also previously developed an Apple II emulator for Windows,AppleWin, and old DOS ASCII game,Pyro 2.
In early October 2019, through the official Guild Wars 2 news page, O'Brien announced his departure from ArenaNet and his intention to start a new development studio.[3] He is currently working as a programmer at the studio "ManaWorks".[4]
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