Something insane happened at Blizzard..

Why Jeff Kaplan left Blizzard. Oh boy. I remember whenever he left the company, I was like kind of surprised. I really was like I I didn't know what to think. Yeah. Like this was weird as hell. Like it kind of caught me by surprise. I don't know if it was you guys too, but that's how I felt. It's good interview. Yeah. Apparently a lot of people What eventually it used to be like in 2016. Sorry. What eventually broke me was it used to be like in 2016 and 2017 I felt very in control of the Overwatch team and the direction of the game as a game director. You know, working with Ray Gresco as the production director. It felt like we were running Overwatch and we were very very successful and doing a good job and I think the fans were happy. And then as we transitioned, you know, Overwatch League was the best intention. You know, my parents always say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I saw before. Yeah. This is Overwatch League was so stupid. Basing it off of [ __ ] teams and like cities thing. I don't know why they did that. That was the Overwatch League and it ended up being an albatross and then Overwatch 2 was the same thing. And what it boiled down for me like what sort of ultimately broke me in my Blizzard career was I got called in the CFO's office and he sits me down and he says it he gives me a date watch this yesterday time was 2020 and was going to slip to 2021 but at the time it was 2020 and he said Overwatch has to make in 2020 and then every year after that it needs a recurring revenue of and then he says to me Jesus if it doesn't do dollars we're going to lay off a thousand people and that's going to be on you putting it on his head like you are responsible for a thousand people if you don't do this the right way if you don't make the game this way a thousand people get fired. Holy [ __ ] Can you imagine that? And that was just the biggest [ __ ] you moment I had in my career. It felt surreal to be in that condition. And as somebody who's worked on a lot of games, made a lot of games. You get in these meetings where they're like, "There's Fortnite has 1400 people working on it. Everybody wants to be you just hire of course 1,400 people and make it free to play. Mhm. We'll make that money, right? And that was I I had believed I would never work any place but Blizzard. I loved it. It was a part of who I was. It felt so weird when Jeff Kaplan left Blizzard. It really did. Like it kind of it was like it kind of came out of nowhere. Um, and I felt I was a part of it and I literally thought I would retire from the place. I never thought the day would come and uh that was it. I was like, you just quit after that. We're done here. Luckily for Blizzard, that CFO is no longer there. I mean, Blizzard is one of the greatest companies in in the history of Earth. They've created so many incredible video games. so difficult to create so many hits and they were done not by chasing money. They're done by small incredible teams. The hodge podge that you describe uh taking big risks and falling in love with the thing they do and and then just chasing it, working extremely hard. And just because you figured out a way how to make a lot of money doesn't mean it's not at the core uh this this incredible creative journey that's incredibly difficult to pull pull off. And just because you got a bunch of really smart creative people who have somehow figured out how to pull it off multiple times in a row doesn't mean you can just treat it like a machine every single time. That's the problem is that they get people in there in the finances especially that don't really have any respect for the creative process and they don't really care about any of that. They just want to make as much money as possible and uh you know you get somebody like Bobby Kodc running the company that's very clearly what happened and also Bobby Kodc was successful in that like he made the stock number go up a lot right it's not like he wasn't successful it's this beautiful journey of of hodgepodge of weirdos working together and weirdos have to run that thing if you have ever have a chance to create something special you have to have weirdos at the helm And the degree to which you don't have weirdos at the helm, creative minds at the helm, uh, and you're a business person at the helm, get out of their way, right? You can't Yeah. This is like the Steve Jobs thing about how the people that usually get promoted regularly, like with more frequency, are not product people, but they're sales people because like products have a ceiling, but sales doesn't in the same way. You cannot have the meetings like you're describing. And I I don't just speak about this particular company. It's just the the entire industry. I just there's so much joy to be had if we keep creating great games. And I just hope we get to see those great games. Not going to happen. I think there's not going to happen with a company like creative people out there, people who make stuff, we're generally we're so focused on the love of the craft that we get lost in it and we love doing it. Um, and we're not cutthroat and we don't have that kind of ambition. We have a different kind of ambition, but there's this whole world, especially as soon as you're lucky enough to have success that are very cutthroat, very [clears throat] ious and for whatever reason we keep giving ourselves to them and uh we need to stop giving ourselves world this is a very good point I think that a lot of companies they expand very fast whenever they have success because they want to multiply that success and be even more successful and make even more cool stuff but I think sometimes in doing so they end up basically making a deal with the devil where they're locked into, you know, making a huge amount of money and now they have to do things with their games that are consumer unfriendly or player unfriendly in order to meet those deadlines, in order to meet those payments and, you know, like payroll. Basically, Warcraft when we made it, there was no CFO at Blizzard. Yeah, you don't need a CFO to make World of Warcraft. You need artists, engineers, designers, producers, and an audio team. You don't need to bring in just because you're making a lot of money doesn't mean you need to now start adulting by bringing in a CFO. You can figure it out. And there are great finance guys. Like I've worked with finance guys who get it and get out of the way and respect and they're gamers and they sort of understand. But like I I wish developers would understand their own value more and stop handing the golden goose to people who don't deserve it. [ __ ] true. Honestly, like I think this is what happens with a lot of companies where somebody takes over that doesn't really understand the actual minutia of the job and then it just basically declines over time. He's totally right about that. Go and goose. What's that? The ability to create a good product regularly on a regular basis. Obviously, how painful was it to say goodbye? I It broke me. I bet. I think I'd be sad. after you've been at a place like Blizzard, which I re I love Blizzard to this day. I have nothing but warm fond memories. I mean, there's those moments where you're like, I wish that hadn't happened, but on the whole, that place is mecca for game development. And uh everything I have, yeah, is due to Blizzard. They provided for me and my family, made me the person I am. So, separating from Blizzard was one of the most painful things. And I was very sad when I resigned. And I didn't realize how broken I was until recently. Like the mourning grieving I had gone through of like I think I'm a little [ __ ] in the head for not being there any how could I give that up. How could I not be there anymore? It was it was really really painful. I think that that also like it's like a toxic environment where I think creative people become even more toxic and it like it it basically like turns their creativity against themselves. I think that happens very often as well. Why did he resign? because he was being put like he was basically saying like you have to meet these player numbers or we're going to fire a thousand people like these like crazy dramatic extreme punishments for him not being able to deliver everinccreasing uh numbers of player count or revenue or something like that. uh leaving. That's the reason. Can we just speak? Seems that way. I don't know. I don't think we can give enough love to Blizzard. Uh it's a legendary company for me personally, for everybody, for millions of people. Created some of the greatest games ever. Warcraft, Starcraft Universe, Diablo, WoW, Overwatch. What made it such a legendary game company? Just looking back at the whole of it. The start is Mike, Allan, and Frank. It was run by three gamers. They were all three of them programmers. They they made the games before they just ran the company. So they knew that's the reason why I wouldn't want to run a game company. It's because I don't make games. How can you possibly run a company about making games if you've never made games? Like I'm a very big believer in the person with a leadership position has to have a strong understanding of the subject matter. They have to each of us as developers if they don't get it they're going to have big going through and they protected us. They shielded us from all of the nonsense. And even when they would align with a business person, they had a COO in the early days named Paul Sams. And Paul protected us. You know, they just they found great people who got it. The company when I joined was like 95% developers and like 5% operations. It's when I left it. Now it's like the opposite almost probably 50/50 and that's like a 4500 person company. The [ __ ] do you need half those people that aren't even developers there? What the [ __ ] are you doing? Video games. Wait, we're supposed to make video games here? Oh, that what do you mean? love of the games and the respect and good treatment for game developers really turned it into the place that it was. Just the commitment to excellence, the high quality bar. Um, and then finding these passionate people like Chris Metson or Sam Dier. They were like the visionaries of early Blizzard, Alan Adam, of just these worlds that we're still making and we're still playing in today. Um, it was infectious and it was inspirational and you wore the Blizzard Blue with an Aspree decor like you felt proud to be part of it. And working at Blizzard was like a huge dream job for anybody that was involved with gamedev. And I think it really was until like I don't know probably the sexual assault scandal or abuse scandal or harassment or whatever you want to call it like that until that happened. I feel like Blizzard definitely had like a huge amount of notoriety to it. And this is like especially like in 2011 dude anybody getting into gaming wanted to work at Blizzard. Like Blizzard was the place to be. Absolutely. Felt like you had made it to be there. Yeah. Not so good, huh? everything you did you did wanting to respect and honor those who had come before you. Um I know it sounds almost cheesy saying it that way, but it really had that sense of reverence like you knew you were part of something special. You didn't take it for granted. Yeah, that's a sense reading everything. I think that's I think that's like what he's saying is there's a little bit more to that I think too like at least that I would say is that I think that a lot of people whenever they get involved with media now they treat it as if it's like their turn to change it and I think that they view it as like they have control over it rather than they are these stewards of it and like basically like instead of looking at it as like it's now your responsibility to maintain this piece of media in a way that you know upholds the values that people want to see it more or less is now it's my turn to be able to do what I want with it. And it's like you just think about like that that mentality shift is like 180 degrees completely different and like you see it's like Star Trek. Yeah, exactly. Like I mean how many times like haven't you guys noticed like whenever somebody gets like a director or you know like a a filmmaker or somebody that's creative gets in control of something and it's such an obvious difference whenever somebody tries to make another really really good version of something versus when somebody tries to do their version of it and I think that's the problem that everybody that was a part of it that truly truly truly uh honored that time uh just to just to take a small place What were some of the brains? So, you mentioned Chris Metson. You you gave so much love to so many people on the team, but I got to ask about Chris Mson, who I would, by the way, love to do a podcast with at some point. What were the brainstorming sessions with him like? It seems like those are pretty uh uh pretty intense guy. Yeah, they were the best. It's like you could walk into a room like the way I would work with Chris is early on when I was more junior. It was just sort of getting creative direction from him. Hey Chris, I'm about to work on this zone called Westfall. Oh, what are your ideas? You know, how could I capture them in gameplay? Well, that won't quite work. How about like this? It was more like that. That's smart. later on. Like I I still remember um the first discussion I ever had with Chris about Wrath of the Lich King, which by the way, you know what that implies? That conversation implies? It implies that they basically gave him autonomy to make decisions for himself, which is like that's huge inside of a company, especially whenever you have like so many moving pieces. You have to you have to be able to do that. If you can't do that, it's going to fall apart. To his office like, "Hey, we're we're finally doing it. We're doing the Northrand expansion. Yeah. You know what excites you about Northrand? Trust. He went back for reassurance. Yeah. Exactly. That's all you had to say. We trust you. And he would draw a map and he'd start pulling up old like Warcraft 2 and Warcraft one manuals and, you know, showing you like pictures he and Sammy had drawn and like So, he did the same thing that I've done on my stream except for he's the one that actually drew them. Good. And he all of it. He would just go on for an hour and then I would sort of digest. I just listen taking constant notes. I'm photographing his whiteboards all the time and then I go back and start to put those into design flow of like, okay, what what's a zone? What's a dungeon? What could be cool? What should come first? What should come last? You know, Lich King, for example, we wanted to try a very specific design to counter a problem we had in Burning Crusade, which is everybody entered through the Dark Portal through Hellfire Peninsula. I remember this. This was so bad. And that they even explained this very clearly. They said, "Howling Fjord and Boran Tundra are on the opposite sides for a reason. I remember this so well. All the server programmers hate you because everybody loads into the same zone at the same time. Lich King, we split them Why do you think Hyel and Vashier were the same way? Up for better player flow. Plus, it's more interesting the more choice you have. Uh, you know, those games are a series of interesting choices. So, we give him two starting zones, but that was the flow with Chris. And so often we would just like, okay, in that first meeting, Chris had put a zone called Grizzly Hills on the board. Well, I don't know anything about Grizzly Hills. Oh. Oh, I like that. Chris, talk about Grizzly Hills. This is my one my favorite zones. If you didn't interrupt him, he'd just go for an hour [laughter] and you have no idea how much of it like he pre-thought about or had existed in previous lore and how much of it making this [ __ ] up. He was just making up on the spot. Mhm. He's just that charismatic and captivating, creating these worlds and be able to brainstorm through them and together. I mean, that that is what you're doing as a consumer of those worlds. you kind of take it for granted that they're incredible, but like you're crafting them like you're looking at a blank sheet of paper and then together coming up my job as I saw working with Chris was I had to on World of Warcraft specifically working with Chris is I was like the translator into gameplay of what Chris wanted how to get it to play like how Chris wanted. So my favorite story is we're working on See, like that's the kind of that's the kind of responsibility in relationship that like two people have to have absolute trust and respect for each other for it to work because like if you have the person like cuz you you have such a different skill set than that other person and like vice versa that you just have to understand and like accept that this person is also a top performer. You are a top performer. Nobody is like the winner or the loser and it's just about figuring out how to do it the right way, you know? That's crazy. Earning partnership. Yeah. Exactly. And we're incessing and Chris is like he's the gentlest, sweetest guy, but because he carries himself with such confidence and everybody's in awe of him. The junior developers get kind of intimidated by him. So, we're in this meeting and we're talking about Silver Moon City because we're introducing the blood elves and Chris is like, "In Silver Moon City, it's got the tallest [ __ ] tower in all of Azeroth." I mean, it is the tallest thing, you know? It's mindblowing the only the blood elves could build it. Fast forward like two weeks later. I'm walking through the hall and I see a bunch of level designers and artists. They're all like crowded around the screen and on the screen they've dragged Black Rock Mountain and Kerazon. No, they're not comparing, are they? And the Stormwind Cathedral. They're comparing. I'm like, "What the [ __ ] are you guys doing?" And they're like, "Well, Chris said that the Silver Moon Tower had to be the tallest thing in World of Warcraft." Well, I mean, to be fair, Black Rockck Mountain is like a natural format. Okay. just And so we're measuring how tall all of these other things are so we can make the tower taller. See, that's something. The kind of person that does that, there's a special kind of person that does that. And that kind of person is very special. Yeah. Yep. They are. Chris doesn't know how tall the burning steps, you know, and the cathedral and Stormwind is. What Chris means is just make the tower really [ __ ] tall. You don't need to measure it. And they're, "Oh, okay. That's okay." Like, "Are you willing to take the heat?" If he I'm like, "I'm willing to take the heat on this one, guys." Respectable. It's just a feeling. It's a vibe. It's a vibe. Ah uh and I also just uh personally have to give all the love in the world for um for the current Diablo 4 team cuz I I've spent more Come on, Lex, bro. Why can't you just play PoE like a normal person? What are you doing, man? Like come on. What is wrong with you? Most recently out of the Blizzard games spent a huge amount of time in Diablo and they've they've created and it's not just the loot. Oh, all right. It's the the whole experience, the art, everything together. Look, it's not a bad game, but I just I can't dude and the season they've c they've created a really wonderful world. So, I can see I can feel how much effort goes into that. They're crushing it. And I think Diablo I in like modern times is one of the best worlds that have built and they know they understand Diablo players like that community is so hard and so demanding and um that team is amazing. Yeah, there's a lot of richness. It's like this is really I mean I don't know how often you get that but it's really the perfect Diablo game. They've really like evolved a lot, grew a lot. So there's this whole mathematical. I will tell you that like I I'll tell you that definitely Diablo II is like much better than Diablo or sorry Diablo I 4 is much better in Diablo II. I mean he's right about that. I just don't really think it's I could talk about Diablo I and how bad it is for like three hours. I'm just going to skip it. Like I think POE2 is just like way way better. It's like it's just it's just better in every single way. It's not even remotely close. I don't know why Lex is trying to do this. I have no idea. Ponenton of just so many numbers everywhere and it's all balanced really masterfully. And then all of you have to come up with new content with the seasons and they they figure out ways to do that. So and and a and a crazy pace. And still make it super fun. They're a great live team. Yeah. And for me personally, like I said, the co-op the college co-op experience have been really like that aspect are really good. all of it. One of the greatest games uh in recent history. Uh one of the things I wanted to mention this is look I guess if you're a casual player Diablo I is not bad. It's not a it's not a look Diablo 4 is not a horrible game. It's not a horrible game. I just like as a more hardcore player like I just I just tremendously prefer POE 2, but I thought about playing Diablo 4 again. Powerful speech my opinion is um sort of instead of doing some kind of corporate goodbye as you were leaving Blizzard. Yeah, you allegedly shared with your team a video of day with Bowie giving advice and people should go watch this clip. But if I may never play to the gallery, Bowie says never play to the gallery. Always remember that the reason that you initially started working was that there was something inside yourself that you felt that if you could manifest in some way, you would understand more about yourself and how you coexist with the rest of society. I think it's terribly dangerous for an artist to fulfill other people's expectations. I think they generally produce their worst work when they do that. Streamers are the same way. They are. They're the exact [ __ ] same. And the other thing I would say is that if you feel safe in the area that you're working in, you're not working in the right area. Always go a little further into the water than you feel you're capable of being in. Go a little bit out of your depth. Mhm. And when you don't feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you're just about in the right place to do something exciting. Damn. Speaking of which, you are just about in a place to do something exciting after leaving Blizzard. Uh you told me that you tried to take some time off. How did that work out for you? Not so well. my my wife. I couldn't imagine myself taking a lot of time off. Like, give me one second. I use the bathroom. But, uh, yeah. Time to collab and do something exciting. Why don't you relax? I'm not talking about myself. I mean, everybody else except me. I'm back. Relax. Calm down. We're good. It's okay. All right. Wonderful. Told me I needed to take at least a year off. And just a year, you know, I've been going really hard. I'd gone 19 years, barely taken vacation. Um, and I let Blizzard consume me. And you know, I was crushed by leaving because I loved the place. And, uh, I didn't know what to do with myself. I was pulling weeds in the in the backyard. Literally gardening. Yeah. Well, she won't let me. Damn. Damn. They had them down bad. garden in the garden because that's hers, but I'm allowed to pull the weeds, right? So, so you you you're the Animal Crossing villager. That's great. I got very good at that. I was very proficient. Wow. And then of all things, I cracked out on Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War and I unlocked Dark Matter Ultra, which I never That's like a crazy achievement to do in that game. Mhm. So, I did that and then I just I couldn't help it. Like it's how I'm programmed. It was like at this point it's late spring, early summer and I'm just sitting in the backyard and I just started writing with notepad about here's a game I want to make. And it was so terrifying because for 19 years I had worked with the greatest developers I thought in the industry. And you know there'd be moments where it's like okay I want to do like a game world map like hey Aaron you're amazing at making game world maps. Like you do that and uh you know like I need some story hooks. Hey Chris, what do you think would be cool here? Like it you know. so collaborative and I was surrounded by the best of the best and there I was by myself and I was out there again and I loved it. It brought all the joy of game making. I thought games were no longer fun to make because it was only about business and somebody's asking me for unreasonable amounts of money and unreasonable amounts of time. and I had forgotten the pure joy of the craft of making games. This is the reason why I think indie games are outperforming AAA 2 is because there's like a there's a passion to it that I think that really, you know, it's like it's kind of like the it's like 90% like kind of the actual work, but then like that 10% passion kind of ends up tying everything together. And actual games, not a product. Yeah, exactly. like it's the the creative pursuit of it. I was designing I was going making YouTube videos to learn Unreal and Adobe Illustrator and all these things to like help me make games whatever Blender. Um I had no right to be doing any of that and it just felt so amazing to do it and I sort of realized I I I came to two realizations. one, I never want to work for someone else again. I never want to create something and then have somebody take my baby away from me. You know, that's really hard when when that happens. And it's sort of happened a few times now, you know, where you have to just let something go that you created. And I wanted it all to be focused on the crafting games in his mind. Art, programming, design, audio, you know, like just not about the [ __ ] of the games industry. I I I'm not interested in the games industry. I'm not interested in the business of games. Exactly. Not interested in the entertainment Exactly. Especially the entertainment industry. People that want to get into it. failed art students and people that are too ugly to be actors that want to take their theater projects and turn them into a video game. Please stop. Stop it. We don't want it. It has to stop. It's just game jamming making stuff that we're going to play together. They think they're Cojima. They are. around that time my the cog I call him my development soulmate. There's a programmer named Tim Ford he reached out and he's like hey man he he was uh like associate tech director on Overwatch at the time. He's like yeah I don't think I can do this anymore. It's just not like it was you know I I just handed in my notice. Yeah. And I'm like, whoa. You know, well, if you want to do something together, like, [ __ ] it. Let's take a stab and, you know, just see what happens. And Tim came over to my house and well, before that, he says, "My last day is on Friday, and uh my exit interviews at like 1:00. I'm going to be over your house at like 2:00 that afternoon." Damn. And I'm like, well, don't you think you should take some time off, Tim? You know, before whatever's next month off, you know, Meg, his wife, will appreciate it. You know, just go pull weeds in in the garden for a while. Yeah, bro. Like, finish your interview immediately. Go to another place. I'm a programmer. All I'm going to do is program for a month. If I take a month off, I might as well start programming our game. Which brilliant. It was so awesome when he said that, man. Bro, like that's that is a guy you want on your side, bro. Like, damn. He came over and I pitched him this idea for a game and I pitched him, let's start a company. It's a real game. And uh that was it. Like that was the birth of us making a studio. Now, meanwhile, as far as the outside world is concerned, you've disappeared off the face of the earth. Smart. But you were actually really smart. Working on a game. Yeah. I I needed to be away from the world. I needed to not have I wanted to not get attention from anyone. I I needed to not read my name on Reddit or, you know, [ __ ] Exactly. any internet site I wanted to not come up let some other Jeff Kaplan bubble the top of the Google you know search list studio so he's making a game called Legends of California I think that's what it's called and if you can believe it or not it's actually not about an HR department trying to figure out how many genders there are a wild west game and uh actually looks pretty good and it's like a survival kind of like a wild west rust style game And um I think it's being published by DreamHaven, which is Mike Moheim, the previous president and original owner and founder of Blizzard. Um one of the three co-founders. Um you know, when he said Mike earlier, that was Mike Moheim. Uh I think it's being published by Dream Haven. I'm not sure about that. I just saw the logo there whenever it got announced, so I'm assuming it's under the same uh the same umbrella. So yeah, that's it. Any trailers for it? Yeah, we looked at it a couple of days ago. not PvP, so not like Rust. Oh, that's the first time I'm hearing that. Somebody said it's like Valheim. Maybe it is. I don't know. But it's like a survival style game like that, man. Uh Dino Flask is going to be all over this conversation, right? Oh god. Well, there's Yeah, this this one's going to set him back uh some time. But I need know what to do. I needed for none of that to happen. I just needed to be able to like mourn the loss of Blizzard and create on my own. Um, so it was great. And at that time, like as soon as it was announced that I was leaving Blizzard, I had like 60 people reach out to me, it was, this was April of 2021. And investment money was nuts. Both like the VC money back then. Like people were investing like I'm not even kidding you, like 5x what they do now. It's insane. like the amount of money that they were throwing out then like this is how like a lot of those like esports organizations got so much money and um crazy like hundreds of millions of money was crazy like the especially the Chinese companies because apparently they weren't getting uh publishing numbers in China or something the whole economy was crazy blackmouth Wukong fixed that and so just everybody was trying to throw money at me which was a very good position to sort of be at to start a company. So what Tim and I did was say we're not doing this for money, but here's the game we want to make and it's going to take this many developers and we think it's going to take this length of time and that means the budget is this and we need for any of these people who want to invest in us. We got to hit that number but after that we're not going to go for more money. It's not an auction to raise as high as we can go. And that cuts out a lot of the traditional investment too. We're going to optimize for control, man. And that's good also because like optimizing for control also means that you can control the trajectory up and down. I think that's a huge factor because a lot of people never consider that. They never think about the fact that, well, if you do this and then everything kind of just gets a lot worse, then how are you going to control that? This is from Lex Freriedman's podcast with uh uh Jeff Kaplan. Like the whole thing's 5 hours long. I didn't plan on watching the entire thing, but I wanted to give you guys a clip of it and look at a little bit of it because I thought it was interesting to watch. So, uh, watch the full video. Why don't you relax, dude? That's crazy. A 5hour VOD. I don't think a fiveh hour VOD is going to happen, guys. I'm sorry to say. As much as people want that, it's just not for me. And uh five hours though, I mean, that's the whole stream, right? That's my entire [ __ ] stream. And uh so I don't think I would really do that, but I will look at one other thing. I might as well, right? I haven't done that for a while. And uh was you become a rival? Maybe. Right. I mean, I don't know. I I don't think that there's going to be I I will probably watch honestly. I will probably watch another one like maybe tomorrow or something like that. Like cuz I Jeff Kaplan obviously was like one of the OGs, right? He's been one of the OGs for a long time. So I do respect him a lot. If you want to show Tigle for people that don't know, that was hilarious. Oh god. What is this? Can I pull this up? I I haven't seen this. with the eight snakes. Whoever Oh, dude. This is the email he sent to Blizzard that turned out to be his application to be in World of Warcraft. Came up with this sheer fisting of an encounter can go [ __ ] themselves. [laughter] Yep. [snorts] Do me a favor favor so I don't waste my guild's time on this kind of jackass shitfest again. Send me an email at to tiggole legacyofsteel.net. Blizzard EverQuest. Yeah, but I think didn't he send another email like this to Blizzard complaining to them and then they ended up hiring him afterwards? I think that's what it was. I don't remember exactly, but yeah, this is this is Jeff Kaplan from literally 30 years ago or 20 or 30 years ago, something like that. When you decide to a implement an encounter that was designed by Okay, so this is by a [ __ ] chimp. [gasps] This is him at the EverQuest development. Get a quality department. Actually beta test the [ __ ] thing and d patch it live. And please, for God's sake, do it in the order I laid it out for you. Don't worry, I won't charge you a consulting fee on that one. And good luck. You might as well pull your heads out of your asses while you're at it. [laughter] Rename the game to Beta Quest since you've used up your allotted false advertising karma on the bizarre and use [laughter] scam of 01. Of 01. Oh [ __ ] That is bro. Literally 25 years ago. A 25year-old crash out still preserved on the internet today. It's so funny. Wow. God, that is so [ __ ] funny. He gave a lot of specific ways that the game could be absolute [ __ ] legend. Jesus, bro. Like I I just I I'm so happy to say it's an internet relic. Yeah, it is. I'm very glad to see it