Jeffrey Kaplan is an American video game designer and former vice president of Blizzard Entertainment, a position he held until he left the company in 2021.
15 Facts About Jeff Kaplan
2.
Jeff Kaplan designed elements of World of Warcraft and is the former lead director of Overwatch.
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Jeff Kaplan had been an avid video game player during his school years, particularly influenced by the various Infocom adventure games; however, lacking programming skills, he never thought he would be able to get a career in the video game industry.
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Jeff Kaplan initially pursued a degree in film, but ultimately got a degree in creative writing at the University of Southern California.
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Jeff Kaplan was unsuccessful at getting any of his creative stories published for several years, receiving over 170 rejection notices in a single year.
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Jeff Kaplan became involved in the massively multiplayer online game EverQuest.
7.
Jeff Kaplan discussed some of his map making attempts which caught the attention of the guild's leader, Rob Pardo, who at the time was the lead designer at Blizzard for Warcraft III; Kaplan was aware that some of his guild members worked at Blizzard, but he had not recognized the importance of the company at that point.
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Around 2001, Pardo invited Jeff Kaplan to come visit Blizzard's offices in Los Angeles, during which he was introduced to several other Blizzard guild members, and they showed him the yet-unannounced MMO World of Warcraft project they had been working on.
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Later, after World of Warcraft was announced, Pardo suggested that Jeff Kaplan apply for a recently-posted job for a WoW quest designer there; Jeff Kaplan realized that the job description was tailor-made for his background, and that his previous visit to Blizzard had been an informal job interview.
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Jeff Kaplan applied and was hired into Blizzard by May 2002.
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Jeff Kaplan's work focused on the player versus environment elements of WoW, including quest design and the overall aesthetics for the various dungeons and raids; he described his position as a "medium" between Metzen's creative elements and the programmers and artists of the level design team.
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In February 2009, Jeff Kaplan announced that he was stepping down as game director for WoW to switch his role at Blizzard to a new, unannounced MMO, which later was revealed as Titan.
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Jeff Kaplan opted to jump on the new project, hoping to create a similar success to what WoW had been, as well as having concerns how long WoWs popularity would remain.
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Titan was considered an ambitious project, designed as a class-based first-person shooter, but had a prolonged and struggling development period along with gameplay that Jeff Kaplan called "very cluttered and confused".
15.
Blizzard announced on April 20,2021 that Jeff Kaplan was leaving the company after 19 years, with Aaron Keller to take over Jeff Kaplan's role in the oversight of Overwatch.