Jeff Kaplan

[Deleted]

He was more geeky and less super objective, rational and efficient when he made his appearances. Personally I believe the chaotic touch when WoW was younger is the main reason many people love to remember these times. I mean sure - people exploited the chaos by stacking to certain things like classes etc. to get their goals but overall for most of the players it was indeed just too chaotic to get personally accounted for everything. What then happened with "bring the player not the class" and the complete overhaul of the game systems as itemization of stats, professions, raid/dungeon difficulty etc.

I'm however not sure if Kaplan would have not ended just at the same point where we are now or worse (taken you actually prefer old wow over current) - so he has the fortunate position to represent the time "before the shift".

[Deleted]

Definitely.

He knows what an MMO is about compared to the instant gratification, teleportation menus, content avoiding players that write posts that World of Warcraft should become more and more a solo game.

The fact that there is essentially no MMO out there with more classic wow or asian MMO elements to it, that is sustaining a playerbase even remotely close to WoW shows that a majority of people don't want that kind of game.

[Hottage]

I get to enjoy Jeff Kaplan all the time!

[Deleted]

if you havent played vanilla you wouldnt really know who that even is assuming you also dont play OW.

Kaplan was the lead designer with Rob Pardo of Wrath of the Lich King. The last time the game was good was when he was still around. Game completely went downhill quality wise once Chilton took over and it never recovered.

[Relapses]

Kaplan was the lead designer with Rob Pardo of Wrath of the Lich King. The last time the game was good was when he was still around. Game completely went downhill quality wise once Chilton took over and it never recovered.

You're absolutely right, if he never left I'd still be spamming "/2 LF1M tank Heroic daily. PST w/ achievement."

Man, I miss those days.

[Friendlyimmolation]

I liked his views, the classic feel of warriors especially.

[Deleted]

You're absolutely right, if he never left I'd still be spamming "/2 LF1M tank Heroic daily. PST w/ achievement."

Man, I miss those days.

I'm sure there would have been a way to deal with that without completely removing the soul out of the game like the way they did.
Also Achievements were obviously a mistake. Should have never entered the game.

[Relapses]

Is there any dev in the spotlight that people ever liked

If you like classic WoW, you'll think Jeff Kaplan is a God. If you liked Cata through MoP, GC is your bae. If you like WoD and Legion, Ion is such a qt3.14.

If you're a rational human being able to think outside of the boundaries of your opinion, you'll realize that WoW lead developers make decisions for the whole of its playerbase and often may disagree with your very specific worldview of "what's best."

[Aeluron Lightsong]

I'm sure there would have been a way to deal with that without completely removing the soul out of the game like the way they did.
Also Achievements were obviously a mistake. Should have never entered the game.

There's nothing wrong with Achievements, hell people asked for them back in the day.

[Deleted]

Is there any dev in the spotlight that people ever liked

No, not that I can recall, they've all been hated, tarred and feathered while they've been in the spotlight.
But most of them seem to get lot of retro-love 4-5 years after they step down.

[Relapses]

I'm sure there would have been a way to deal with that without completely removing the soul out of the game like the way they did.
Also Achievements were obviously a mistake. Should have never entered the game.

Oh yeah? And let's bring back raid attunements, too. Fuck the Plebs who never get to see content. They suck anyway!

[Varitok]

I like how he lied his ass off there about the "1% Myth.", or dismisses it by showing numbers for entry level raid content and didn't actually give percentages. The truth of the matter is that people get caught up in how few people saw Naxx but never realize that most raiders never saw beyond Molten Core, most raiders never saw beyond Karazhan/ZA, most raiders never saw beyond the complete and total faceroll entry tier of WLK, same with Cata. It wasn't until LFR that raid participation skyrocketed, and again when SoO Flex was released. And the reason that raid participation and completion is so high today is that everything from LFR all the way up to Heroic is complete and total faceroll, with Mythic being the real challenge. And do you know how many guilds actually ever complete mythic raids? Yeah, it's still abysmally low. His design philosophy wasn't healthy for raiding.

A lot of the excruciatingly painful experiences in early WoW that were holdovers from previous MMOs and that are now gone were Kaplan's ideas. The man is a dinosaur, and until he can show that he's learned from the past 12 years of MMO development, that MMOs are more mainstream now and not a super niche thing like EverCrack, I don't want him anywhere near an MMO, especially WoW.

Its pretty funny how you're whining about him for literally no reason even though He worked on WoW through its best expacs up until later into WOTLK. WoW's quality has steadily declined since he stopped being head of WoW. He is godly at interacting with players and encouraging good content.

The way you talk about him it sounds like he personally wronged you. He hasn't worked on WoW since 2009 but you act as if he was working on WoW until last year and somehow his ideas are wrong to you even though he hasn't touched it. Not gonna lie, your opinion is shit and its the reason why WoW has gone down in quality.

[Deleted]

If you like classic WoW, you'll think Jeff Kaplan is a God.

No. I happen to think he was a complete hack out of his depth. Should have stayed leading his EQ guild.
WoW and Blizzard would have been much better off without him ruining Vanilla.

[Relapses]

No. I happen to think he was a complete hack out of his depth. Should have stayed leading his EQ guild.
WoW and Blizzard would have been much better off without him ruining Vanilla.

That was mostly sarcasm. What I meant is that rather than trying to associate game developers with whatever period of WoW's existence you might prefer, it's more productive for us to understand that they often make decisions which are far above what the average forum goer considers important for the game.

[Krieleros]

Ah yes, good ol Jeff Kaplan. What a reasonable, non-temperamental and completely unbiased lead developer. Responsible for such non-rage induced quotes like this one, which he wrote about EQ shortly before moving to WoW:

"Whoever came up with this sheer fisting of an encounter can go fuck themselves. Do me a favor so I don't waste my guild's time on this kind of jackass shit-fest again, send me an email at tigole@legacyofsteel.net when you decide to A) Implement an encounter that wasn't designed by a retarded chimp chained to a cubicle A.)Get a Quality Assuarance Department C) Actually beta test the fucking thing and D) Patch it live. And please for god's sake -- do it in the order I laid out for you. Don't worry, I won't charge you a consulting fee on that one. And for good luck you might as well E) Pull your heads out of your asses. While you're at it rename the game to BetaQuest since you've used up you're alotted false advertising karma on the Bazaar and user interface scam of '01.Fix the Emperor encounter. Fix Seru. Rethink your time-sink bullshit. Fix all the buggy motherfucking ring encounters (I suggest you let whoever made the Burrower one do this since that dude apparently laid off the crack the rest of you were smoking). Fix the VT key quest. Fix VT (just guessing it's fucked up considering your track record). Don't have the resources to fix this stuff? Move the ENTIRE Planes of Power team over to fixing Shadows of Luclin AND DO IT NOW. If you don't fix Luclin, you jackassess will be the only ones playing the Planes of Power."

Alas, this shining beacon of level-headed reasoning has moved onto bigger and better things! It's sad that the community has become so toxic in his stead.

To be honest, this makes me like him more. Also, those of you who played EQ during PoP knew how buggy it was. EQ had a its fair share of bugs and PoP took it to the next level. Releasing expansions every six months to year, rapidly expanding the world and scattering the playerbase pissed off a lot of people.

[Gasblossom]

Kaplan is world class. There is a reason he was put on the newest franchise. When they need a success they go with Jeff.

[Relapses]

To be honest, this makes me like him more. Also, those of you who played EQ during PoP knew how buggy it was. EQ had a its fair share of bugs and PoP took it to the next level. Releasing expansions every six months to year, rapidly expanding the world and scattering the playerbase pissed off a lot of people.

I quoted it more to remind people of the guy's abrasive personality while they sit here and pretend he was the best thing since sliced bread. The "DAE Vanilla WoW" circlejerk is already here in full force and it's pretty irritating to see the revisionist viewpoints people have of something they never even experienced.

[NoiseTank13]

Kaplan is world class. There is a reason he was put on the newest franchise. When they need a success they go with Jeff.

what reason is that, ensuring that balancing and release of new content goes at a pace that would best be described as 'molasses running down glaciers'?

[Krieleros]

I quoted it more to remind people of the guy's abrasive personality while they sit here and pretend he was the best thing since sliced bread. The "DAE Vanilla WoW" circlejerk is already here in full force and it's pretty irritating to see the revisionist viewpoints people have of something they never even experienced.

I hear you. This isn't even the worst quote I've seen from him . The vanilla circle jerk is real and I get why people wax poetically about it. I get why people like Kaplan. I liked WoW vanilla and TBC and I enjoy Overwatch, but neither of those games is perfect. What's funny with all this reminiscing about the good old days when WoW was "hard" is that it casualized a lot of things that sucked in EQ, like exp penalties for dying. He took good ideas and tried to trim down what he thought was unnecessarily punishing and add unique things he thought players would enjoy. Ghostcrawler, after Kaplan, tried to do the same and was crucified for it, but is popular after he left for some reason. Watcher is trying to do the same thing and so will the next guy. Once Ion leaves and goes elsewhere, he'll be a great visionary on MMOC and the next guy will be the punching bag.

Also, the EQ expansion he's bitching in the post, Planes of Power, somewhat casualized travel in EQ because portals were added. The EQ neckbeards complained about it making it too easy for casual players. Funny how this shit has been a recurring theme since the dawn of MMORPGs.

[Nellee]

I'm a Jeff Kaplan fan. The guy has done wonders for the MMO space as whole. If you don't know much about him I would highly recommend and encourage you to research his earlier days back from Everquest in the guild called Legacy of Steel. Very interesting story. Love his crazy mad as hell posts at Everquest devs for bugged/shit boss fight mechanics.