Brian Holinka

Brian Holinka was Lead Combat Designer on World of Warcraft at Blizzard Entertainment. He was involved in all combat related systems including class design and PvP content. He left the company in May 2023 to join Greg Street's own.

Holinka joined Blizzard and the WoW team in August 2012. His background before this was as a first-person shooter (FPS) designer, including working on the multiplayer components of Transformers: Fall of Cybertron, Homefront, and Frontlines: Fuel of War. He was previously a member of and, and was brought into when it was formed from the latter group's core members. Holinka got his start in the game industry moonlighting on the “Desert Combat” mod for Battlefield 1942 while serving as a Captain in the United States Air Force.

On June 15th, 2017, he announced that he was moving to another project at Blizzard. In October 2018, he returned to World of Warcraft as Lead Combat Designer, heading up the team responsible for all combat related systems including class design and player versus player content.

• "We've tried very hard to make PvP a bigger part of the game, and more accessible to more people, because in the end, we all want more people to kill."

• ''"One of the main reasons I became more active on things like Twitter was I really wanted PvP players to know that there was someone at Blizzard focused on PvP"

• ''"I think one of the misconceptions though is that I'm like the only one who cares about this stuff … the whole team cares about PvP."

About Brian:

• "We're always consulting closely with Brian, like "If we make this change is it going to make them overpowered there?" - "No, it'll be fine, you can do it" or "Oh my god, don't do that!" We scare him a lot - "Oh no, no, don't do that!" is frequently the response we get from Brian." - Kris Zierhut, Lead Class Designer

• As of March 2014, Holinka does rated battlegrounds and arenas most days of the week, as well as some arenas at lunch almost every day
• Holinka played 6 characters and 8 specs during PvP season 14
• Holinka has played World of Warcraft "on and off since launch".
• Participated in WoW Source: Warlords of Draenor PvP and Class Updates
• In early 2014, an image of Brian Holinka sporting a large afro wig became a popular meme template. In April 2014, a link to the "Holinka meme generator" was tweeted by Community Manager Lore, along with several of Lore's own versions of the meme.
• The NPCs Armsmaster Holinka, Roo Desvin, and Brian Holinka are references to Holinka. The latter can be found in eastern Ashran standing on a mushroom with NPC Chris Kaleiki, named after game designer Chris Kaleiki, and their pets in Ashran. Holinka and Kaleiki were both involved in the design of the Ashran battleground.