Key ideas from Jeff Kaplan

• Jeff Kaplan rose from EverQuest guild leader to legendary game designer, creating quest-driven leveling that revolutionized MMO gameplay in World of Warcraft
• Zork taught Kaplan that 'the book is always better than the movie' - text-based imagination creates more powerful experiences than graphics
• Titan's $83 million failure taught that vision requires execution path, not just ideas - 'Ideas are easy, vision is shepherding them into existence'
• Overwatch emerged from Titan's ashes in six weeks using 'crawl, walk, run' philosophy and Jeff Goodman's concept of '50 classes with one interesting thing each'
• Small teams avoid compartmentalization where 'you get to have a loud voice' - everyone participates in every decision versus becoming 'cogs in the machine'
• Blizzard's polish culture meant 'no one can be satisfied with a bug' and QA specialists who could detect single frames of input delay
• Creative leaders must say no constantly - 'the best feature we can add for the player is shipping' when teams generate endless great ideas
• CFO ultimatum demanding specific revenue targets with layoff threats broke Kaplan's 19-year Blizzard career - 'biggest fuck you moment I had'