History

Jeff Kaplan

Jeff Kaplan is an American game designer who was one of the first two quest designers on World of Warcraft and later its lead designer for world content: quests, zones, dungeons and raids. Hired from the EverQuest raiding scene in 2002, he worked on WoW until 2009, then directed Overwatch. Players know him by his online name Tigole, which turns up in the game as the ice cream maker Tigule.

Jeff Kaplan at the 2019 Overwatch League Grand Finals Jen Smith, CC BY 3.0

Alias	Tigole
Employer	Blizzard Entertainment (2002-2021)
WoW role	Quest designer, lead game designer
Later	Overwatch game director
Tribute	[Tigule and Foror's Strawberry Ice Cream]

Before Blizzard

Kaplan was born in New Jersey and grew up in La Cañada Flintridge, California. He earned a creative writing degree from the University of Southern California and a graduate degree in creative writing from New York University. He spent several years trying to get his fiction published, collecting more than 170 rejections in one year, and by 2000 he had given up on it. He spent his time playing games and building custom levels with the editors for Duke Nukem 3D and Half-Life.

In EverQuest he played under the name "Tigole Bitties" in Legacy of Steel, a raiding guild known for world-first kills. He became well known for his accomplishments and his blunt posts on the guild's website. The guild's leader was Rob Pardo, then lead designer of Warcraft III at Blizzard.

Joining the World of Warcraft team

Around 2001 Pardo invited Kaplan to Blizzard's Irvine office, where he met other guild members who worked there and was shown the still-secret World of Warcraft. After more visits, Pardo pointed him to a posted opening for a quest designer, a job that asked for a creative writing background. Kaplan later realized the visits had been an informal interview. He was hired in May 2002.

He spent his first weeks helping test Warcraft III before it shipped in July 2002, then joined the WoW team as one of its first two quest designers, alongside Pat Nagle. He worked closely with Chris Metzen and described his role as a go-between for Metzen's story ideas and the artists and level designers.

Work on World of Warcraft

The first things Kaplan added to the game were some of the earliest quests in Westfall. He became one of the main people on dungeon design after he showed the team his idea for monster placement in The Deadmines. Over time he became lead game designer for world design, responsible for quests, outdoor zones, dungeons and raids, and he shared lead design credit on The Burning Crusade (2007) with Pardo and Tom Chilton.

The Deadmines loading screen. Kaplan's monster placement for the dungeon got him into dungeon design. © Blizzard Entertainment

His most famous quest is the one he calls the worst he ever made. Kaplan is a fan of Ernest Hemingway and created the hunter Hemet Nesingwary in Stranglethorn Vale as a nod to him. He wanted to write a short story about the character, but did not think players would read it if it were simply handed to them. So in The Green Hills of Stranglethorn the pages of Nesingwary's novel are scattered across the jungle, and players must collect every page of each chapter. Kaplan hoped the tradeable pages would create a small economy. By his own account, the main result was annoyed players, and the quest became a running joke inside Blizzard about what not to do. He discussed it, along with other quest design mistakes, in his 2009 Game Developers Conference talk.

Stranglethorn Vale, where the pages of Nesingwary's novel are scattered © Blizzard Entertainment

On February 12, 2009, Kaplan announced that he was leaving the WoW team for a new, unannounced project. He later said he was worn out after about six and a half years on the game.

Overwatch and later career

The new project was Titan, a planned successor MMO. Its development struggled and was stopped in 2013. Kaplan and Metzen led a small remaining team that turned ideas from Titan into Overwatch, a team-based shooter released in 2016, with Kaplan as game director. Overwatch earned more than $1 billion in its first year, and Kaplan became the public face of the game through developer update videos and forum posts.

Blizzard announced on April 20, 2021, that Kaplan was leaving after 19 years, with Aaron Keller taking over Overwatch. In a 2026 interview on Lex Fridman's podcast, his first public appearance since leaving, Kaplan said he left after pressure from Activision Blizzard over revenue targets for Overwatch 2. In the same interview he revealed his new studio, Kintsugiyama, and its first game, The Legend of California, an open-world first-person shooter published by Dreamhaven, the company founded by Mike Morhaime.

In-game tributes

Hemet Nesingwary, Kaplan's tribute to Ernest Hemingway, in Stranglethorn Vale © Blizzard Entertainment

Several items in Classic carry Kaplan's EverQuest name, deliberately misspelled as Tigule:

[Tigule and Foror's Strawberry Ice Cream], sold by ice cream vendors such as Brivelthwerp. Its partner, Foror, refers to fellow designer Alex Afrasiabi.
[Autographed Picture of Foror & Tigule], a gray junk item that occasionally drops from Alterac Valley NPCs.
[Tigule's Harpoon], a polearm that drops from Gahz'ranka, a sea creature players summon by fishing in Zul'Gurub.

Other nods include [Gloves of Kapelan], a reward from the quest Alliance Relations; Kaplan, one of the reindeer named in [Metzen's Letters and Notes]; and the Legacy of Steel - Fine Weaponry shop in Stratholme, named after his old guild. Warcraft Wiki notes that Tigule also appears in later lore as the inventor of ice cream.