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Jeff Kaplan Interview: WoW, Overwatch, and The Legend of California

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@lexfridman

–

Here's my conversation with Jeff Kaplan, a legendary Blizzard game designer of World of Warcraft and Overwatch, which are two of the biggest, most influential games ever made. Jeff is one of the most genuine & awesome human beings I've ever met: kind, thoughtful, hilarious, and still & forever a gamer through and through. This was a truly fun & inspiring conversation. We talk about it all: the lows, the highs, the memes, the details of the game design process, and the new game he's been secretely working on: The Legend of California. I got a chance to play the game with Jeff, and it's incredibly beautiful (and fun). You can wishlist it on Steam now. I can't wait to play it with all of you! Conversation is here on X in full and is up everywhere else (see comment). Timestamps: 0:00 – Episode highlight 1:27 – Introduction 4:07 – Early games: Pac-Man, Zork, Doom, Quake 18:33 – Writing career – 170 rejection letters 34:06 – EverQuest obsession 47:04 – Getting hired at Blizzard 1:02:32 – Lowest point in Jeff's life 1:08:37 – One of Us 1:12:54 – Early Blizzard culture 1:32:36 – Building World of Warcraft 1:50:20 – How WoW changed video games 2:07:42 – Single-player vs Multi-player 2:28:35 – How Blizzard made great video games 2:54:25 – Online toxicity 3:01:59 – Why Titan failed 3:19:09 – Overwatch in six weeks 3:46:07 – Best Overwatch heroes 3:54:37 – The challenge of matchmaking 3:58:01 – Rust 4:08:22 – Why Jeff left Blizzard 4:30:35 – Diablo IV 4:32:03 – Getting back to making video games 4:40:59 – The Legend of California 4:54:44 – Greatest video game of all time 5:02:51 – AI and future of video games

→ View original post on X — @lexfridman, 2026-03-11 21:44 UTC

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