Jeff Kaplan

[Benomatic]

No idea who he is. I shall await a nibble video praising him

[mingarrubia]

Kaplan and Pardo are by far the best and most talented/gifted devs that WoW has ever had. Of course I miss them.

[TheFirstOnes]

Who's he again?

I mean, back in classic, I never knew the guy, cause I never really cared. Now, I still play, and I still don't give a shit about em. As long as I have something to do, then i'm fine. And as of now, I'm fine...

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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.

Wait a fuck....that was him? Holy shit. Back then, I just thought that a random 14 year old got triggered over a hard ass boss on everquest, and decided to rant about it.

Ahaha. I'm glad he left now.

[TriHard]

I miss him working on WoW, but he is on Overwatch now, so good to know that game is in great hands Best dev and leader in the gaming industry for sure.

[Kokolums]

It goes beyond wow. There was a titanic philosphy shift at blizzard right around late BC. Before that time, blizzard games had a massive edge on others because they were incredibly social with amazing in game communities. Battle.net 1.0 was THE lobby. It made the games popular because it provided a great way to socialize. Wow continued this with strong server communities.

Somewhere around late BC this changed and it ALL blizzard titles not just wow. They removed global chat from wow and destroyed server communities. SC2 was originally going to ship with NO chat channels at ALL. they didnt even see the NEED to talk with anyone. AMM was supposed to handle everything. There were MASSIVE threads protesting this until blizzard caved. Diablo 3 was ALSO not going to have chat (also relying solely on AMM) . Blizzard happened to mention this shortly before repease of D3 and there was a huge outcry so they grudingly put a very clunky and awful chat interface in at the last minute. SC2, D3 and WoW all suffered / are suffering from this mentality and its absolutely killing box sales and subs. Its still persistent as well. Blizzard was going to implement massive phasing in cities like stormwind in Legion but there was MASSIVE outcry from the roleplaying community who knew phasing would destroy roleplaying and it took a LOT of very loud protesting because they almost went through with it anyway. So they nearly wiped out those who sub to rp. And that was just months ago.

For some reason if you build a community in a blizzard game you are targeted for total destruction. I wouldnt be surprised if they make another attempt to destroy the rp community next xpac with city phasing and hope the complaints are just less.

[wych]

Kaplan is very talented, the game misses him for sure. But he's lead Overwatch into being Blizzard's new golden chicken, so I doubt they're too bothered.

One thing you always get from Kaplan is he understands the need for a community feeling in a game, and that what makes a good game great is playing with friends and forming relationships with other players

[Matthias]

I love Jeff Kaplan but people seem to forget that he's was still on the WoW team for the development of WoTLK the xpac that started to water down the games difficulty. I always say Blizz Shot Themselves in the Foot in WoTLK in the long term for a number of reasons. But remember Jeff was there when 5 mans went from being a comprehensive dungeon crawl to an AoE fest.

I think he would have had enough foresight though to know that Xrealm, LFR, and LFG would be detrimental to server communites. These all happened after he left.

[Tonkaden]

No, but since my glaringly obvious sarcasm wasn't clear I'll happily judge this community for believing the guy was any better for the game than its current developers.

The numbers will tell you that the game was better off when he was on board. Its not by accident that when he left after Wrath was completed that every subsequent expansion has went down hill. Sure , players come back... just like a woman not leaving an abusive husband. 99% of players agree that after WotLK, the game went down hill.

[Redroniksre]

Kaplan most likely needed the shift in games to keep his creative blood running fresh. That said, if he was still around you would probably need a 5 man group in order to level. 10 Levels would take 1 year to accomplish, one piece of gear would drop from raids that only allow you to enter once and once you die then you cant raid it anymore. You know, things that all these hardcore players want that completely missed the fact that WotLK and down were successful not because of their raids, but because of the content they provided outside of those raids.

The numbers will tell you that the game was better off when he was on board. Its not by accident that when he left after Wrath was completed that every subsequent expansion has went down hill. Sure , players come back... just like a woman not leaving an abusive husband. 99% of players agree that after WotLK, the game went down hill.

Yeah, no, 99% of players do not agree with you, sorry.

[Tonkaden]

Kaplan most likely needed the shift in games to keep his creative blood running fresh. That said, if he was still around you would probably need a 5 man group in order to level. 10 Levels would take 1 year to accomplish, one piece of gear would drop from raids that only allow you to enter once and once you die then you cant raid it anymore. You know, things that all these hardcore players want that completely missed the fact that WotLK and down were successful not because of their raids, but because of the content they provided outside of those raids.



Yeah, no, 99% of players do not agree with you, sorry.

Prove it please? You cant just like I cant. The 99% was exaggerated, but I promise the majority (51% or better) feel this way. They gotta. Sub numbers would still be climbing if the game got better over time. Its a childs game now. No effort needed. Welfare gear still. Its instant gratification at its finest.

[Redroniksre]

Prove it please? You cant just like I cant. The 99% was exaggerated, but I promise the majority (51% or better) feel this way. They gotta. Sub numbers would still be climbing if the game got better over time. Its a childs game now. No effort needed. Welfare gear still. Its instant gratification at its finest.

Its far from welfare. Epics haven't meant anything even as far back as TBC because of badge, this was also when Jeff was in charge. Nor is this game a childs game, as raiding consistently gets more difficult and now M+ is out for those who don't want to raid. WotLK was a high point in my opinion as well, but far from the best as it still suffered numerous problems. Also Sub decline is because a change of focus in the Market, people want MOBAs, they do not want timesink MMO's. They want games like Witcher, not share with you friends 2017 edition.

[Berengil]

Definitely.

He knows what an old timer's MMO is about compared to the non-tedious, anti-neckbeard, grindy bullsht-content avoiding players that write posts that World of Warcraft should become more solo-friendly and group-optional.

FTFY

You're never getting your tedious, overly-grindy, 1 path to gearing, basement dweller special MMO back.

And anyone who tries to make a new one like that will fail and/or go F2P. At best, those kinds of games are a niche.


" Times change." --- Garrosh Hellscream

[Deleted]

Prove it please? You cant just like I cant. The 99% was exaggerated, but I promise the majority (51% or better) feel this way. They gotta. Sub numbers would still be climbing if the game got better over time. Its a childs game now. No effort needed. Welfare gear still. Its instant gratification at its finest.

as no one has actual numbers let's not use them at all in an argument as *any* number no matter how "trustworthy" you want, desire, of think you are, is absolutely meaningless and non credible.

I don't believe anyone numbers no matter the percentage, can be 2%, 51%, 80% -200% whatever.

[A dot Ham]

I wish that mentality was still around

His opinion changed on that. The game evolved... you should probably learn to accept change.

Designing the game for the less than 5% of players that even step foot into the content while it was relevant, was unanimously labeled a terrible business model.

They had multitudes of new players still joining WoW for the first time even into WotLK. The problem was the "veterans" had max level characters of almost every class (I know I did and I consider myself pretty casual). In an MMORPG rewards dictate what content players do or don't participate in. Bottom line... leveling with your friend wasn't all that rewarding. That friend... didn't very much like playing alone either. So you would get these players that would join up, and be overwhelmed by the level process, and quit and never see level cap.

So they needed a way to reverse the disparity. Get 95% of the playerbase playing relevant content and 5% doing... random shit... whatever tickles their pickle.

That is why catch up mechanics and mechanics to speed through the leveling process became so crucial. Ya the leveling IS part of the experience, and so is the challenge... but its a lot more fun when you run into another person every now and again, and group quests... good luck getting those done if the content is no longer relevant.

How much fun or successful would Tanaan, or Timeless Isle have been if only 5% of the playerbase was there?

I certainly hope there is no one out there worshiping the stupid shit I said 12 years ago...

[wych]

FTFY

You're never getting your tedious, overly-grindy, 1 path to gearing, basement dweller special MMO back.

And anyone who tries to make a new one like that will fail and/or go F2P. At best, those kinds of games are a niche.


" Times change." --- Garrosh Hellscream

Ah yes, accuse people who disagree with you of being neckbeards and basement dwellers, that always works.

Meanwhile that game for "neckbeards" had a ton more players than current WoW

[Berengil]

Ah yes, accuse people who disagree with you of being neckbeards and basement dwellers, that always works.

Meanwhile that game for "neckbeards" had a ton more players than current WoW

I don't think a game like vanilla would do very well if it came out today. Tastes change.

So (imo) the choice is:

1) change to keep as much of an audience as you can

OR

2) stick to your guns and watch your playerbase dwindle to an ultra-loyal core ( which I think would be even smaller than what we have now)

[Nanaboostme]

watching is old panel interviews, talking about philosophy on the success of a game, is just nostalgic and bizarre and ironic and surreal all at once

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Nope, I play Overwatch too, so I still get to be frustrated with him.

WHAT???????

He responds to the forum daily. You might not agree with his philosophy or decision, but he gives productive and reason based on his perspective. He doesnt throw how excuses, its always something that promots progressing forward.

[Pull My Finger]

No. At least not in his former function around 2004-2009 or how long it was when he was on the WoW team.
He was one of the old guard that stood in the way of good and needed evolutions of the game.

[Nanaboostme]

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.

dude, he is only human. This is one of his rants back during his Everquest days all before Blizzard. BREAKING NEWS. He was salty, just like we've all been, but ultimately, he was commuted to improvement. He clearly did not turn this into a habit of his. Stop using something far from the past as a way to retaliate. Its pathetic.

[Akka]

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

It's about "sweet spot". Coffee is a bit too bitter, so if someone adds a sugar, I like my coffee more. Now if someone after that add another two sugar, now I have some disgusting sweet sirrup instead of a coffee and I don't like it. One sugar was enough, more is too much. Same thing here.

but is popular after he left for some reason.

I absolutely despise what GC has done to the game. That being said, he's rather personable, chill, and able to explain his point calmly and explicitely. I can find him nice and be interested by what he says, and at the same time think he's been the killed of WoW.
Also, he seems pretty obvious that he actually took decisions that were against his personal preferences (where he probably is much closer to mine than what he implemented). So I can appreciate his opinions, even if I dislike his actions.

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I love Jeff Kaplan but people seem to forget that he's was still on the WoW team for the development of WoTLK the xpac that started to water down the games difficulty. I always say Blizz Shot Themselves in the Foot in WoTLK in the long term for a number of reasons. But remember Jeff was there when 5 mans went from being a comprehensive dungeon crawl to an AoE fest.

I think he would have had enough foresight though to know that Xrealm, LFR, and LFG would be detrimental to server communites. These all happened after he left.

Completely agree with you on WotLK.
But I wonder if Kaplan didn't leave WoW precisely because it was turning toward something he didn't like ?

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I don't think a game like vanilla would do very well if it came out today. Tastes change.

People in marketing also thought that space simulator were just out of fashion, as sales didn't follow.
Then Elite : Dangerous and Star Citizen happened.