Blizzcon 2007 Panels w/ Jeff Kaplan

[SaucyThighs]

Just something to enjoy and reflect on a bit. It's cool to hear the enthusiasm, playfulness, gamer-ness in the way the team was back then... the kind of spirit and mindset that made the game what it was.

Part 1 of 7:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfb1LPo08i4

[Holdodlig]

There is a reason he left Blizzard.

Probably because his best bud harassed women. Maybe he wasn't that clean after all or else, we would have heard of him.

[MoanaLisa]

Kaplan's time to go was after the collapse and cancellation of Titan. He stuck around to help piece together OverWatch but he and many others had the wind taken out of their sails with the Titan debacle. That was a traumatic event for all involved and the company generally. Blizzard hasn't really been the same since.

[Gimlix]

Kaplan's time to go was after the collapse and cancellation of Titan. He stuck around to help piece together OverWatch but he and many others had the wind taken out of their sails with the Titan debacle. That was a traumatic event for all involved and the company generally. Blizzard hasn't really been the same since.

We can't even call it Blizzard anymore because all the top tier developers and CEO's are long but gone. This is just a former shell that was once ran by AAA+ devs. Now just have left over devs who just came outta college. Quality has gone downhill by far on all their games. WoW is their only remaining big flagship that keeps the company going.

[McNeil]

Jeff and most of the team were the original neckbeards who played EverQuest all the time and complained about all of its faults. They were told to make their own MMORPG and viola, we got WoW. Todays devs are more concerned about making the game free from any kind of controversy (no more racism in a game shaped by racism…) while shoving in their woke agendas. There is such a massive gap between the teams enthousiasm and passion that it somewhat surprises me that they didn’t rename the company at this point (gotta milk out all of last bit of goodwill that the company once had I guess).

[Gourbaak]

Jeff and most of the team were the original neckbeards who played EverQuest all the time and complained about all of its faults. They were told to make their own MMORPG and viola, we got WoW. Todays devs are more concerned about making the game free from any kind of controversy (no more racism in a game shaped by racism…) while shoving in their woke agendas. There is such a massive gap between the teams enthousiasm and passion that it somewhat surprises me that they didn’t rename the company at this point (gotta milk out all of last bit of goodwill that the company once had I guess).

yeah all the problems that wow currently has is due to anti-racisme sure

[cozzri]

Kaplan's time to go was after the collapse and cancellation of Titan. He stuck around to help piece together OverWatch but he and many others had the wind taken out of their sails with the Titan debacle. That was a traumatic event for all involved and the company generally. Blizzard hasn't really been the same since.

Titan is Destiny... It was a collaboration project orchestrated by Activision between Blizzard and Bungie to develop the MMO as quickly as possible. Bungie would not have been able to develop the MMO so quickly without outsourcing.

Project "Titan" was canceled when Destiny gets released.

Not to mention Destiny's appearance on the Blizzard Launcher...

[MoanaLisa]

We can't even call it Blizzard anymore because all the top tier developers and CEO's are long but gone. This is just a former shell that was once ran by AAA+ devs. Now just have left over devs who just came outta college. Quality has gone downhill by far on all their games. WoW is their only remaining big flagship that keeps the company going.

It's quite bizarre to expect people to stay around the same software studio for over 20 years. This is a bizarre bullshit meme that people say. For what it's worth the legal mess that Blizzard is in now was largely caused by those 'top tier developers and CEO's' but that's something that few want to admit although it's very plainly true.

Titan is Destiny... It was a collaboration project orchestrated by Activision between Blizzard and Bungie to develop the MMO as quickly as possible. Bungie would not have been able to develop the MMO so quickly without outsourcing.

Project "Titan" was canceled when Destiny gets released.

Not to mention Destiny's appearance on the Blizzard Launcher...

This is wrong. There is no evidence to support this and it's been quite clear from the start that OverWatch is what was scraped together out of the scraps of Project Titan. If you have a valid source for this, post it. Otherwise, you're just spinning lies and BS from what was originally an r/showerthoughts type of post on Reddit (that doesn't qualify as actual evidence).

[Jester Joe]

Probably because his best bud harassed women. Maybe he wasn't that clean after all or else, we would have heard of him.

Except the Overwatch team actually praised Jeff highly.

https://gamerant.com/overwatch-jeff-...-corporate-bs/

But it's much easier to make knee jerk statements right

[Orby]

I think one of the reasons he left and many others like Lore is because the writing is on the wall there now, the execs and big bosses run the company, its a corporate predatory machine (ironic since most of the execs like Kotick are harassers themselves, as well as threatened to murder someone) Blizzard isn't that broom closest company ran by a few nerds, its grown into a corporate monster that wants to suck out your wallet and meanwhile treat their stuff like cattle. This is why I no longer play blizzard games. There's no passion there at least how I see it.

[elmoe420]

Kaplan's time to go was after the collapse and cancellation of Titan. He stuck around to help piece together OverWatch but he and many others had the wind taken out of their sails with the Titan debacle. That was a traumatic event for all involved and the company generally. Blizzard hasn't really been the same since.

I've heard this before and you can definitely see it in the body language etc. of some of the Titan devs when they've spoken about it publicly since.

However, I think there is an alternative side of this to consider that is really important. Failure is something I've found to be necessary in terms of the creative process generally. I'm coming up on 18 years with the same company, and I've been a part of some big big flops. The mentally we take though is if you don't crash, sometimes with a pretty large blast radius, you aren't taking big enough swings or you're swinging too infrequently. Big bets lead to big results, both positive and negative. The idea is that as long as the financial cushion can absorb it then failures, even relatively big ones, are a powerful or even critical part of the invention process. As long as you've learned a bunch of critical lessons along the way, then even years spent on a project that flops and is canned quickly have yielded great intellectual capital for the team and company.

Look at Blizzard post-Titan, they quickly rebounded with both Overwatch and Hearthstone. If anything the cancellation of Titan led to an albeit short-lived renaissance for Blizzard in my opinion.

This is not to ignore the other half that you've called out though. The toll of failure on the individual from an emotional/psychological standpoint can certainly be tough. I think there will always be some non-zero amount of that regardless of the organizational culture and leadership. In Blizzard's case, I think it is also clear that many of the great employees involved in Titan were reaching a inflection point in their career simply given company tenure. Natural attrition of that veteran talent combined with what we now know were serious workplace issues on some teams I think truly accounts for why the upsides from the Titan cancellation were short lived.

[Relapses]

Jeff was an interesting guy... let's not forget that tirades like this are what got him the position he had on the Blizzard team:

"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."

[Jester Joe]

Jeff was an interesting guy... let's not forget that tirades like this are what got him the position he had on the Blizzard team:

It's admittedly funny but he definitely seemed to either matured a lot or was humbled since then at least.

[Relapses]

It's admittedly funny but he definitely seemed to either matured a lot or was humbled since then at least.

Oh I know. I find it funny because this thread is pure nostalgia bait and people love to conveniently forget small details like the one I posted.

[Lochton]

Titan is Destiny... It was a collaboration project orchestrated by Activision between Blizzard and Bungie to develop the MMO as quickly as possible. Bungie would not have been able to develop the MMO so quickly without outsourcing.

Project "Titan" was canceled when Destiny gets released.

Not to mention Destiny's appearance on the Blizzard Launcher...

That is completely false. Project Titan was an unknown FPS game that then was scrapped. From the ruins of the project, they stitched together Overwatch, and even some art assets and heroes (I believe it was Reaper, Tracer, as well as Hanzo/Genji which were initially meant to be 1 character) were meant to be used in Project Titan.

[Amnaught]

Just something to enjoy and reflect on a bit. It's cool to hear the enthusiasm, playfulness, gamer-ness in the way the team was back then... the kind of spirit and mindset that made the game what it was.

Part 1 of 7:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfb1LPo08i4

This is just fucking typical for ActiBlizz. They hate PVP. Now at least theyre admitting it. RIP Blizz.

/s

[Kokolums]

the heart and soul of blizzard was the guy who created battle.net. without battle.net, blizz would have been nothing. unfortunately, they destroyed battle.net and replaced it with a launcher. thats why every game they make now feels greatly diminished.

[enigma77]

Oh I know. I find it funny because this thread is pure nostalgia bait and people love to conveniently forget small details like the one I posted.

Wdym. Posts like that is what made him great.

An actual gamer.

[Relapses]

Wdym. Posts like that is what made him great.

An actual gamer.

He was passionate for sure but he's also from an era of gaming that is long, long dead. Just pointing out that not everything from the OG Classic devs is Wholesome 100 frfr.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Back when game designers led the game, not lawyers.