Player testing only reinforces the need for many quests. “Our old estimates of how many quests we thought we did versus how many quests we ended up doing were drastically off,” Kaplan told Edge. And so, the world of Azeroth was designed so that there were always new stories to explore, even if it only killed six rats for one farmer.
In 2008, Kaplan was the game director of World of Warcraft, leading the charge on one of the series’ flagship expansions.
Kaplan left World of Warcraft behind the day after the Wrath of the Lich King expedition. His new calling was, naturally, Lead Game Designer on a new MMO in the works. He was the guy Blizzard hired for their MMO expertise, after all. This new project was going to be the most ambitious thing Blizzard had ever done, and its working title reflected that: Titan.
But Titan would never see the success of World of Warcraft. In fact, the infamous Titan would never see the light of day. In the desperate struggle to make something – anything – from the ashes of Titan’s design, Kaplan has come up with what is, arguably, his greatest achievement at Blizzard: Overwatch. created for Titan. “I started thinking about a closer scoped game using Geoff Goodman’s concept of dozens of classes with abilities,” he explained to Edge. Kaplan envisioned a game in which these faceless classes became playable heroes with names and stories. But rather than an MMO, it would be a PvP shooter.
“Team Fortress 2 was just mega in my mind,” Kaplan told Game Informer while discussing the genesis of Overwatch. “There was such inspiration from that, as we left Titan and came up with ideas that we were passionate about as a team, we really chased our hearts out more than anything else.
Kaplan’s vision was embraced by the team, leading them to present it to Activision. “They were super polite and super nice to us, but you could feel that undercurrent of, ‘Oh my God, of all things, what are you doin’ idiots? Kaplan told Edge. But while another shooter alongside Call of Duty may not have been part of Activision’s original plan, Kaplan says the character designs won over CEO Bobby Kotick. “What that bought us was that we had until March to put together a basic combat demo of the game,” Kaplan said.
A successful demo led to full development, and Overwatch would finally be revealed at BlizzCon in 2014. Its fresh new world and innovative reimagining of MMO and MOBA-like class abilities as shooting mechanics quickly captured the hearts of fans. .
Kaplan’s developer update videos are the gold standard example of direct transparency with a game’s player base.
But it’s really Kaplan’s innovative approach to communication that has made him such an effective face for Overwatch. His Developer Update videos are, to this day, the gold standard of direct transparency with a game’s playerbase. why these changes were made. He used simple language, so the updates sounded like a friend talking to you, rather than a marketing team talking to you. All of this made it easy to understand the reasoning behind Overwatch’s many changes and invited players to feel like they were part of the decision-making. There is perhaps no better example of this than Role Queue, the team composition system created after years of debate between players and the Overwatch team.
Along with always being present on the Blizzard forums, there was a constant sense that Kaplan cared about Overwatch players, or at least actively listened to them. And even at times when the conversation might get exceptionally heated – Mercy’s resurrection revival was a particularly difficult time – Kaplan would be there to answer questions. It always felt like players were part of the development of Overwatch. It’s hard to imagine that would be the case without Kaplan’s particular approach, and Blizzard would be ill-advised to abandon strategy in the future, especially when it comes to Overwatch 2, regardless of the approach taken. per the company, Blizzard won”t be in the same place without Jeff Kaplan. But it’s also important to remember that Kaplan never saw himself as the head of the ivory tower in his plans. He was always Jeff from the Overwatch team, never Jeffrey Kaplan, Game Director. His developer updates would regularly defend his colleagues, whether it be the design decisions of Aaron Keller, the heroic creations of Geoff Goodman, or the lore of Michael Chu. Kaplan was a team player and, at least in terms of outward perceptions, seemed to favor this approach among his peers. And as Keller becomes game director, it seems reasonable to expect that at least some of Kaplan’s spirit will remain.
In 19 years, Jeff Kaplan has been one of Blizzard’s most important voices. Recruited for his passion, his work helped shape one of the fundamental pillars not only of World of Warcraft, but also of modern MMO design. His force of vision helped save Blizzard’s most notable disaster and make it what is arguably the developer’s most important mainstream game in Overwatch. And as head of that project, he’s refined communication between developers and players in a way that few other studios have been able to replicate. We will miss him. But just like Blizzard superstars Mike Morhaime and Chris Metzen, who also left the company in recent years, Jeff Kaplan leaves behind a legacy of wildly successful creativity and innovation that has inspired not just those at Blizzard, but also world studios.
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