Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming | Lex Fridman Podcast #493

TL;DR

Jeff Kaplan went from failed writer drowning in rejection letters to legendary Blizzard designer because EverQuest showed him who he really was.

Key Points

• 1.Jeff grew up in Southern California in the 70s–80s obsessed with coin-op arcades, Intellivision, NES, and text-based game Zork, which he credits as a foundational world-building experience.
• 2.He earned a master's in creative writing from NYU, citing Kerouac, Hemingway, Bukowski, Orwell, and Salinger as influences, and genuinely intended to become a published author.
• 3.After moving back to California for a girlfriend (who broke up with him within two months), he structured his life around writing 8 hours a day for roughly 3 years straight.
• 4.He received over 170 rejection letters in a single year submitting short stories to literary magazines, paying for every submission including the return postage on his own rejection letters.
• 5.The failure spiral led to heavy isolation, deep depression, and a serious alcohol problem he wrestled with until his early 30s — he is now long-term sober, which he calls one of his proudest achievements.
• 6.He threw every manuscript, 20 volumes of handwritten journals, and all personal writing in a literal dumpster — a deliberate psychological break he compares to a boxer throwing in the towel.
• 7.He poured all his freed-up time into EverQuest (launched March 1999), ultimately logging approximately 272 played days (over 6,500 hours) across roughly 3 years of play.
• 8.He met his future wife in EverQuest — in an era when no one revealed real-life identities and everyone assumed all players were male.
• 9.He rose from unguilded rogue to raid leader to guild leader of Legacy of Steel, the top guild on the Nameless Server, which taught him his first real lessons in leadership and motivation.
• 10.He learned about EverQuest through a .plan file post by id Software programmer Brian Hook announcing he was leaving id to work on EverQuest at Verant/Sony Online Entertainment.
• 11.His path to Blizzard began when EverQuest guildmate "Ariel" — secretly Rob Pardo, lead designer on Warcraft 3 — asked to see Jeff's homemade Half-Life levels and invited him to Irvine.
• 12.Multiple Legacy of Steel guildmates turned out to be Blizzard employees, including Scott Mercer and Dale O'Man; guild member "Barfa the Troll Warrior" was Alan Adham, co-founder of Blizzard.
• 13.Jeff had saved Alan Adham's character in an EverQuest dungeon called The Hole using a rare, expensive teleport potion — without knowing who Barfa actually was.
• 14.His creative writing degree was listed as a requirement (or strong plus) in Blizzard's job posting for Associate Quest Designer on World of Warcraft, making him a uniquely perfect fit.
• 15.After a six-month interview process — culminating in a final interview at an Arco station Jack in the Box — Jeff was hired as one of Blizzard's first outside designer hires; he is now secretly building a new open-world multiplayer game called *The Legend of California*, set in the 1800s Gold Rush era.