9 years after launching his own studio, former World of Warcraft lead designer Rob Pardo finally reveals what he’s doing with it

In 2016, former World of Warcraft lead designer Rob Pardo announced a new venture called Bonfire Studios, made up of former Blizzard colleagues and ex-Nexon CEO Min Kim. Nine years down the road, he’s finally revealed the studio’s first project: A team-based PvP game called Arkheron.

Pardo told VentureBeat that Arkheron has been in proper development since 2018, but said the process has been slowed by “curveballs” like the Covid-19 pandemic. Playtesting with a small community began in 2024, and while the game is now apparently far enough along that Bonfire is willing to share the fact of its existence, it hasn’t revealed any specifics except that it’s a team-based competitive live service game set in a dark fantasy universe. Pardo said that’s in part because “we have not found the right way to describe it in a way that really paints the right picture for the game.”

“It’s in this wonderful place where it has a lot of familiar concepts from other genres, but the core of the game is really unique and the combat is really unique,” Pardo said. “It’s created a lot of challenges for us to actually explain it well to people. Because people always get the wrong impression. They get a picture of the wrong game.”

“It’s very fast-paced and isn’t turn-based or anything like that. It has its own unique combat style. It’s not really a shooter. It’s not point-and-click like Diablo. We hopefully have made it playable on the controller from the beginning. So it’s actually very conducive to controller play.”

It’s not much to go on, fair enough, but I do think it’s interesting that after nearly a decade of virtual silence, it turns out that Pardo and company have actually been doing something all along—especially given the number of other, more recent veteran-led videogame startups that haven’t made it that far, including Casey Hudson’s Humanoid Origin, Jerry Hook’s Jar of Sparks, and Mac Walters’ Worlds Untold. Pardo’s long list of credits at Blizzard—along with WoW, he also worked on Warcraft 2 and 3, StarCraft and StarCraft 2, Diablo 3, and Hearthstone—also makes Arkheron a project worth watching.

If you’re to learn more about what Arkheron is actually about, Bonfire is also now gearing up to expand its pool of playtesters. You can sign up for a shot to get in at bonfirestudios.com.