YouSaid · the spoken record

Jeff Kaplan

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326
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2026-03-11
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2026-03-11
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  1. “Him and Ben Brod basically were the core designers behind that. But Eric and Kevin Jordan were these two key designers working on World of Warcraft for Team 2. And then you had this tech group that was headed up by John Cash. And John Cash did the first day that I showed up to work on Team 2, they said, you have to go get your login from John Cash. I'm like, John, the John Cash from ID. And, you know, John Cash has a skin. You could be John Cash in Quake 3. And then he saw me and he was a huge EverQuest player. And you're like, he was like, you're the guy who runs Legacy of Steel. I'm like, you're John Cash. And we had that moment where we kind of fanboyed. On each other. And it was just the vibe was so cool there. Like there were very few producers. So a game team, there are five core disciplines that make a video game. You've got”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Team two was kind of the redheaded stepchild. Like, apparently before I joined, they had tried to spin off a second team multiple times and failed. And then they finally decided they were going to make World of Warcraft. There was a game called Nomad. I don't know what that game was exactly, but that was what Team 2 was working on at first. That got scrapped and Alan steered the team towards World of Warcraft. And there's amazing”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “That environment I remember walking in the door and thinking it feels like I'm walking into a dorm room because it was just posters on the wall and there were actually like people would have futons because they'd be sleeping because we would work so much back then. But the vibe was, it was very small, like Blizzard the day I joined in May of 2002 was fewer than 200 people. And that included there was a whole group up in San Mateo called Blizzard North. So Blizzard South, the Irvine group was responsible for StarCraft. and warcraft and there were two development teams at Blizzard. It was called Team One and Team Two at Blizzard South. Team one was revered. These are the RTS guys. They made StarCraft, Warcraft 2, and they were at that time, they're working on Warcraft 3.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “It was amazing. It was the dream. When I showed up at Blizzard on my first day, the office was on the University California Irvine campus at the time. They have this research and development park where if you're like a tech company, you can get office space there. And Blizzard took up when I joined, it was three-fourths of the building was Blizzard. And there's like a building right next to it that had like Cisco. And it was like all kind of techie places. And it was so funny because you drive up and everything was very serious and corporate. And then outside of the blizzard offices, everybody's wearing black t-shirts and shorts. And on scooters and skateboards, and you're like, okay, that's where Blizzard is.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “No, no. My boss was Alan and Alan was very understanding. And they kind of knew what they were getting into when they hired me. And that post actually embarrasses me when I hear it now. There's so much ego in it. I think that's it's got that. 20 year old, you know, I don't know what I don't know.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “And it was such an unhealthy, creative collaboration in the film industry. It's a very I look up unhealthily to the film industry and admire it and grew up with all these legends who had come from there. But it's like a caste system. And I was on the bottom of the caste system as an intern, and I was seeing how the other people who were low caste in the film industry were treated. And it was just horrible, you know. But games was different. Games was very flat. It didn't matter if you were the CEO or the boss, like the way Mike and Alan carried themselves with, you know, me who was an associate game designer, you felt like an equal. And I think it's not just the camaraderie, but the part that shouldn't be overlooked is the work itself and the work ethic. That's what really pulled me out.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Yes, it was everything I needed as such an introvert, you think that there are extroverts and introverts and introverts don't need anybody, but weirdly, I think introverts almost need people more. And we don't always know how to engage in the right, healthy ways and how to find people and how to connect with people. And it was great. The thing that had attracted me to creative writing was the solitude of it and the fact that you didn't have to collaborate and you could just write what you wanted to write. And it was all you would succeed on your own or you would fail on your own. And that was very attractive to me. And the thought of creative collaboration was actually off-putting. I spent all four years of undergrad interning at Universal Pictures because I thought I wanted to be in film.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “I tried antidepressants, but I hated, I just hated taking pills and feeling like something was in me and making me feel different. I never responded to it. And then the hardest thing, which I've never mentioned to anyone and is hard for me to talk about, but eventually I went through ECT, which is electro-convulsive therapy, shock therapy. And that broke me out. And I would never endorse that as a miracle. That was I was at such a low point that people were very worried about me and my well-being. What was going to happen, and that was sort of an extreme pull the rip cord, like there's nothing else to lose moment. I think that was the difference maker that and starting at Blizzard.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “I became, you know, I got in that constant struggle of try not to drink but drink to make it feel better. I was lucky my parents were very supportive of me even in my 20s even after I quote unquote left the house I went into therapy and that was very helpful You know, extremely helpful. And one thing I learned is that you have to find the right therapist for you. It's not just checking a checkbox of I went to therapy. It's about finding somebody who sort of Helps you get out of whatever rut you're in in a way that's healthy for you.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Were a lot of really low points. I'll give you the weirdest one. I started drinking a lot and alcohol was something that I really wrestled with until my early 30s. And one of the things I'm most proud of today is sobriety and having been sober for such a long time now. And I remember I would like buy a bottle of old granddad and like drink the whole thing by myself and then watch the Oscars. I remember of all things I'm watching the Oscars, which is just such a fake bullshit environment. But I was like, you know, I was really drunk. And all those people seem so together and successful and polished. And I just, it made me, it was that contrast that made me feel like such a failure. And it all seems so stupid and unimportant to me now”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “I need to work here. Like, this is these are my people. This is where I belong. Like, it was the greatest thing ever. And so, yeah, that's my. Crazy journey to Blizzard”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Where I'd never imagined somebody would curse in an interview or stop to buy smokes. And again, it was like I'm around my people. Like, I never smoked, but just. Know being around people who didn't care about What the corporate norms were was so inspiring. And then my last interview was with Alan and Rob and a great programmer named Bob Fitch. I think he's one of the first five developers at Blizzard. And they took me to an Arco station that had a jack in the box. You know, like sometimes they'll combo. It was like Arco Jack in the box. And that was my final interview at Blizzard at the Arco Jack in the box. And I remember thinking to myself, these guys just brought me to a jack-in-the-box that's in an Arco station.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Who is one of the original designers on WOW, really he doesn't get enough credit for his contributions. He was one of the earliest class designers, PvP designers. But he's a really quiet guy. And they paired him with Chris. And Chris just owns the room. You know, Chris, you could just sit and listen to him. He's so creative. He's so passionate. And the way he articulates things, like you just instantly become a fan of Chris when you're around Chris. Chris, Kevin, and I go to lunch at this Italian place that was across the street from Blizzard. And I remember Chris made a stop to buy cigarettes, you know, on the way to the interview? And then every other word out of Chris's mouth was like fucking shit. And I had come from this whole corporate culture from my dad's recruiting business.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “And I just had the fucking moment, that job opened up. I applied with all my heart, you know, like they had a bunch of quest writing on it. And then I went through like a pretty hardcore six-month recruiting process because they never hired designers from out of the company. Traditionally, designers were promoted from within Blizzard. Either they would like transfer out of other disciplines or they would come from quality assurance, tech support. So hiring somebody off the street was kind of a big deal for them. And they really put me through a grilling I met with, it was the first time I met Chris Metzon, who is. Maybe the most inspirational, creative person on the planet. And you instantly, they paired me, they did this interview pairing or these two guys. It was Kevin Jordan.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “I'm like, okay, I'll check the blizzard job site. And they had announced World of Warcraft and posted on the job site was the job for an associate quest designer. And the funniest part of it was, I forget if it was a requirement or a plus in the job description, but they're like, we really want somebody with a creative writing degree. You guys set this up for me. Like they were just looking. And it was that hindsight moment of actually these guys were just interviewing me for six months. They were actually friends and they were really cool about it too.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Having lunch, Rob introduced me. This is Alan Adham. He plays Barfa. I'm like, oh, Barfa. And we, you know, he has, you saved me in the hole that time. Well, it turns out Alan was the founder of Blizzard, and he was the head, he was sort of the head of everything at that time. It was Alan, Mike, Mike Morheim, and Frank Pierce. And what I didn't realize with these lunches were, like, I just loved them because I felt like as myself, I felt true happiness being surrounded by these, you know, people who were talking about video games and I felt comfortable around. And one day, Rob logs into Evergreast. He wasn't playing much at the time. He said, I want you tomorrow to check the blizzard job site”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “And I had this potion that was like a really expensive potion that was a teleport potion that no one but someone in the Uber guild could afford at the time. And I hand the potion to Barfa and I said, here, use this. It'll teleport you out. And I'm a rogue. I can just stealth and get out of the dungeon on my own. So I saved Barfa not really knowing who Barfa was. And I did it with a very expensive potion.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “And Barfa wasn't somebody who played with us all the time, but kind of like Ariel got into the guild kind of on the side. It was one of those like inside invites of like, who's Barfa? I don't know, but Barfa's in the guild now. And there was at the time it was a new dungeon called the never done it before. We jumped down on this hole and we're doing this whole dungeon and everything goes wrong as it's prone to do in EverQuest. And the whole guild escapes except for Barfa, whose troll character's so big he can't jump out of the exit.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “And we're talking about dragons and swords and raid tactics and talking shit on all the people in the guild. And I literally had this moment where I felt like myself for the first time. I just felt like so comfortable. And that was an eye-opening moment. And after that lunch happened, he invited me for a couple more lunches down. I just saw it as like, oh, now I made friends with these people online. Now we know each other in real life and they happen to work for this game company. And another one of the lunches. They invite this troll warrior to have lunch with us whose name in the game was Barfa, the troll warrior.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “To this day, a great friend of mine named Scott Mercer was the enchanter in our EverQuest Guild, the guy named Dalomin. There was a guy named Roman Kenny who was like this totally psychotic wizard who played in our guild. And I had lunch with these guys. You know, we just went out to Irvine to like a restaurant. And forgive me for the misuse of the phrase, but it was like my coming out moment. And we talked about games having that stigma and being embarrassed about who you are and what you like. Like up until that point, I would never tell. Friends, family, like I love games. I'm playing this game EverQuest, it's so cool. We just killed a dragon. And so you were hiding this part of your identity. And I'm out to lunch with these guys in Irvine”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “I drove down there. I ended up Rob Pardo, who at that time was the lead designer on Warcraft 3. And he was Ariel, you know. So, okay, it wasn't a woman after all. It wasn't this blonde Wood elf. I don't know what you expect at that point. It was Rob Pardo.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “No, I was freaking out in the different sense. I'm like, am I going to get mugged when I, like, who are, is this a scam? Because you didn't meet people off the internet.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “It was very much on its way to enshrining itself as being one of the legendary game. Like it was beloved by gamers. But there were still ignorant people like me who hadn't played War II or Diablo 2 or StarCraft, which was shocking to people.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “And I'm like, they all work at Blizzard too. He's like, yeah, we're all Blizzard. And it was so weird because during that era, I didn't have a lot of money. It was not like kind of nowadays it feels like everybody plays every game, but you had to be selective. So like I never bought StarCraft or Diablo or Warcraft. I was much more of the Half-Life Quake Quake 3 guy around that time. And I never played a blizzard game and I just got invited to like go to Blizzard Entertainment.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “He says, you know, my name's Rob. I'm a designer at Blizzard Entertainment. I hear you're in Pasadena because you mention it. I write about the Rose Parade and all these things on our website. It was blogging before blogging exists. So he knew I lived in Pasadena. And he's like, Irvine's only an hour away. Why don't you come down sea blizzard? And you can also meet and he names like four people in the guild.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “Ariel had stepped down as guild leader. I had become guild leader. And then at one point, Ariel contacts me and says, hey, you know, you were talking about those half-life levels you made. I want to see those. I'm like, oh, that's cool. Like, I didn't know you played Half-Life. Like, yeah, maybe we can get a server up and I can play him. And Ariel tells me, no, mail them to this address in Irvine. Again, to rewind in the time machine for a second, to send something like a half-life level over the internet would have taken like 12 hours. So, you actually burned it onto a CD and stuck it in the mail. So I put my half life levels. I send them to Ariel.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “So as time went on, Ariel became busier and busier. And then one day they contacted me and we were having this like whisper back and forth and they said, you're going to have to take over the guild. I'm just too busy. And then it came out later, well, let me back up a second. I started fooling around this time Half Life One had come out and with both Duke Newcomb and Half-Life One, one of the incredible things that those companies did back in the day was when they shipped the game, they shipped the editor on the CD. And if you were curious enough, you could like fire up that editor and fool around with it. So I made Duke Nukem level and you'd send it off to like those UK programming magazines and, you know, you get excited because your level was in, you know, some random magazine. And then I started making like half-life levels.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “Send me messages like, hey, I'm not going to be online tomorrow, or I'm not going to be online tonight. Can you run the raid? Can you run the raid? And running the raids was very natural for me. And it was my first experience with leadership in my life of like, how do you motivate people? Like, what does motivation look like? What does discipline look like? How do you inspire people? When do you force people versus encourage them? So it was a learning experience for me on the fly. And I had the safety net of the real guild leader would log in eventually.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “So when the first guild leader left Legacy of Steel, the founder, he was a guy named his online name was Dred. That was his name. He left. And our guild was kind of in this listless spin for a while. And eventually somebody stepped up and took his position as guild leader. And that person's name was Ariel, who was this blonde Wood Elf warrior female. who always refused to wear a helmet because thought their character was so pretty wanted to show their face all the time so Ariel was a great guild leader for us and made me like assistant guild leader raid leader officer type in the guild and over time Ariel got busier and busier and you know with”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “It was not shortly, but not too long after a new expansion had come out at the time it was Shadows of Lucklin, which didn't speak to me like the expansions before, like the one before that was called Scarzavellios, which was an amazing expansion. And I had gotten the job at Blizzard. And I guess I'm just an obsessive person. All that time and energy that I had put into EverQuest, the second, you know, the second my first minute started at Blizzard, that was my new obsession.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “Yeah, you think you're quitting for good. You'd have those moments of like, I'm doing this too much. I need to move on in life. I'm going to put it down and walk away and hopefully not come back. And there were times where you did come back. When I finally didn't leave EverQuest, it was actually extremely easy because I was psychologically done with the game at the time.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “It wasn't except there was a stigma to it. And one of the weirdest parts of that is, you know, I mentioned like you could type in the slash played in EverQuest. Well, if you did the slash played on how much TV people watch, what would that look like? It would blow. 6,000 hours out of the water easily. Well, in 20 years ago, it would have, you know, not today.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “Yeah, yeah The funny part for me with EverQuest is, you know, you play a game as much as I played EverQuest and people are like, you're through years of your life away. Like you can't win a game like that. And I'm like, I don't know, like sitting here today. My whole career and my family are thanks to EverQuest, so I think I won the game.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “Absolutely. In those days, there was a great stigma to mentioning any real life info. You just kind of kept it all really close to your chest. And you never knew who was male or female. You kind of assumed everybody was male.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  35. “And I sort of like at first I joined the guild, I was just like the bright eye bushy tail. I was like one of the few rogues in the guild. I just wanted to be helpful. I really admired the people running the guild. Like we had a great guild leader. And it was just a really fun experience. And, you know, the guild leader one day just disappeared. He quit and he was going through, you know, his own thing. And that's what would happen in EverQuest. Like people would just kind of disappear all of a sudden. There wasn't a, hey, in about a month, I'm going to stop playing because I'm starting this new job. People had to quit in some dramatic way where they just disappear. And basically our guild leader stopped playing.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  36. “But it was a great group. It was super fun. It was people from all walks of life. And to coordinate these people, like you just had to repeat everything like 200 times. Okay, we're gonna port from North Row. Everybody get to North Row, and then you'd have to repeat that for like six hours to have any chance of like 20% of the people showing up in North Row.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  37. “In the late 90s, everyone was talking shit. You know what I mean? The gaming culture was just a different thing back then.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  38. “Yeah, and what's weird is you enter the cycle where being with other people gives you camaraderie and relief and makes you feel like you're not doing so bad in life, but you can quickly enter a cycle of, but then you're withdrawing from life and it makes you feel that way more to where you can only get the fix from the game at that point. Psychologically, there's a lot going on there.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  39. “Yeah. So, organizing people in an online game like EverQuest is like hurting cats because, you know, Everyone has their own will. Some people are loot motivated. Some people want the guild to do well. Some people are just lonely and want people to hang out with. And there was also a lot of depression in the EverQuest community. It was something I suffered with, but a lot of people, you know, anytime you're feeling sad or down, you're looking for escape. One of the great things video games brings us is escapism. And escapism. Isn't always bad or negative. But when you sort of abuse it to escape your real life problems, it's bad and negative.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  40. “And needing perfect coordination to pull it off, it was insane how fun. Like you would literally scream out, you're alone in your room at home, but you felt like you were there. It was a game of high highs and low lows, and it did everything right. It was amazing.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  41. “Yep, in the context of EverQuest, rating is usually around 30 people or more getting together to conquer something that you couldn't beat otherwise. And to do successful rating, you usually needed to join what in EverQuest everyone referred to as an Uber guild. So I had this great pride in my EverQuest journey that I most of the time leveling up, I was ungilded, or I was in like a role-playing guild with rogues only. And it was when I got to level 50 in EverQuest was the top level. I got invited into this guild called Legacy of Steel, which on our server was the top. Every server had a top guild. And I was on a server called the Nameless Server. And the top guild was legacy of steel and that The thrill of getting 30 people together to go see if you could beat Nagathin who was the fire dragon or Vox, who was the Frost Dragon.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  42. “See how much played time you had. I had, I think it was like 272 played days in three years. So you start to do the math on like how much time in those three years I was living in that world. It was kind of insane.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  43. “I was just transported. It was the world of Norath. And it wasn't just the world itself and how it looked. I thought the game was gorgeous. It was the mechanics, you know, that I was this halfling rogue that, you know, had to go out and adventure in the world. And when I killed stuff, I got experience and I needed better loot to kill more stuff, to get more experience. the sort of draw of progression in the game it was amazing i and i just lived my life of i can't wait till the next time i log in there was a lot of escapism going it wasn't all healthy when all was said and done when i finally had quit everquest three days later you could type in the command slash played”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  44. “It was 1999 when that game came out and I had a friend Victor, like kind of a lifelong friend, one of the few friends I had who played computer games because there was a stigma to that. You know, it wasn't, you didn't walk around telling people you played games. They thought you waste your time. And my friend Vic had bought EverQuest. I'm like, that's that game that that guy Brian Hook went to work on. Is it good? And he's like, yeah, you got to play it. And the moment I logged in.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  45. “Gradually and suddenly, so when I had that faithful moment where I just sort of gave up with writing, I had these days where I'd structured eight hour chunks of just this was writing time. You know, I sit solitary, typing all that was gone. And I could still support myself, which was nice. And then I had this free time and I wasn't spending it with anybody. I was just alone. Me and the dog Jack. And I just poured it all into EverQuest.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  46. “Perform as a fake actor in that role versus when you're off the clock and no one's asking you any questions, you know, you're not at Thanksgiving dinner and your uncle's pressuring you into what your future is going to be for the rest of your life when you go home, how do you spend your time? Like what makes you happy? What brings you fulfillment? And through those paths, you're going to find out what you're going to become, not what you want to be. It's what do you want to do.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  47. “There's confusion, there's pressure. Like the pressure we exert on younger people for having it figured out, it's insane. So the advice that I always give is And it sounds so stupid, like this sounds really trite, but. Focus on what you want to do, not what you want to be. The pressure that society kind of puts on us is, you know, oh, you want to be an astronaut? You want to be a firefighter? Do you want to be a writer? Do you want to be a game maker? And I think we get lost in the trappings of Like a vision of what that role is and how to”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  48. “Yeah, this is one of those hindsight things where, you know, having gone through it and ended up okay on the other side, which you don't know at the time, you know, when you're a young person in your late teens or early 20s, there's so much pressure on you. And I really think adults don't help. You know, every time you run into the younger nephew or whoever and you start to say, It's such bullshit to do to a human being, you know?”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  49. “Yeah, and I think rightly so our parents, our coaches, our mentors train us not to give up. And I think a lot of us take pride in that I'm never going to give up. I'm going to do this come hell or high water. And sometimes there's that reality, especially when you're now in your mid-20s where you have that moment of like, am I really going to be this? Like, am I ever going to? Sort of find the light here and maybe, and it's so hard, it's so hard to have this moment. Maybe this isn't my calling in life, especially when you don't know what the next calling is going to be.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  50. “I just had a moment where I said, this is going to destroy me. And like I don't want to be discouraging to anybody because I really do believe, like you hear it so much, like you have to work for your dreams, never give up. Like we're trained this way. Like never give up The universe, actually, maybe not the universe. A group of editors at literary magazines across the United States was telling me it was time to give up as a writer. Like I wasn't cut out for it. And I stopped.”

    2026-03-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #493 – Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source