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Ezra "Ephoenix" Chatterton passes away
The news had been encouraging overall. Ezra "Ephoenix" Chatterton, the Make-A-Wish recipient who had visited the Blizzard offices and been granted a lot of wonderful World of Warcraft gifts, seemed to be doing better until he had a stroke in August. Even still, the family remained hopeful. But this past Monday, in a sad turn of events, Ezra lost his valiant battle with cancer. Gamers the world over have posted messages, sent emails, and taken the time in-game to commemorate his passing, and to remember the courage and determination with which he'd faced his battle. Blizzard has also offered their condolences. As part of his Make-A-Wish trip, the folks at Blizzard had granted Ezra the ability to design and voice his own quest ("Kyle's Gone Missing!" available to all Horde players in Mulgore), worked with him to design his own weapon (Merciless Gladiator's Crossbow of the Phoenix) and he was given the world-first player-owned (Ashes of Al'ar) Phoenix mount. As time passed, a World of Warcraft TCG card was also created for him, showing off Ezra's beloved Tauren Hunter, with the name Ezra Phoenix. Further, Ezra was also credited for giving Blizzard the idea for the broom mounts now familiar to those who have celebrated Hallow's End in WoW. Ezra's father, Micah Chatterton, has been in contact with this blogger on occasion, letting us know about young Ezra's love of video games, his son's desire to become a developer when he grew up, his progress and his undeniable spirit. After Ezra's passing earlier this week, Micah sent along a message to us for the World of Warcraft community as well. In honor of Ezra and his family, we are reprinting it in full behind the cut.Note: Comments are disabled for this post.
Ezra's father thanks the WoW community for their support
The Orange County Register's Blizzard Blog has posted a message from Micah Chatterton, father of Ezra "Epheonix" Chatterton, who, as we reported yesterday, passed away earlier this week. Micah's pain is tangible, but he says that Ezra loved his life, and the greatest tribute that he or anyone else can pay to Ephoenix is by trying to love life as much as he did. He also thanks the WoW community for their outpouring of support. There's no question that we can be a little silly and raucous at times (which is what makes, as Ezra certainly knew, being around this game so much fun), but when it comes down to it, we are a community, and when one member of the community suffers, we all do.Once again, we pay our condolences, along with all of our readers who posted comments yesterday, to Micah and his family in this time of grief. Definitely give his statement a read -- it's extremely sad to hear about the suffering that Ezra went through, but Micah is exactly right: Ezra's life and the smile he had even when facing a tragedy like this should be an example for us all.Micah also forwarded the message along to us, so we've posted it in full after the break.
