History

Kevin Jordan

Kevin Jordan is a game designer who was one of the original designers on World of Warcraft at Blizzard Entertainment. He spent most of the game's development on class design, building out the spells and abilities that the nine original classes learn from level 1 to 60. Several items and NPCs in the original game carry his name or his family's names.

Watcher Jordan, the Duskwood guard named after him © Blizzard Entertainment

Known for	Original World of Warcraft class design
Employer	Blizzard Entertainment
Blizzard role	Game designer
Later work	Hex: Shards of Fate, Tyranny, Alaloth
Tributes	Watcher Jordan, [Staff of Jordan], [Penelope's Rose]

Work on World of Warcraft

According to Warcraft Wiki, Jordan was the third game designer to join the World of Warcraft team, after Allen Adham and Eric Dodds. In those early years the small design group sketched out the game's core systems. Warcraft Wiki also credits him with pushing for two opposed player factions, the Horde and the Alliance, and for including player-versus-player combat in the game.

The Alterac Valley loading screen. Jordan argued for two opposed factions and for player-versus-player combat. © Blizzard Entertainment

From around 2003 his work centered on classes. The fan wikis go further and say he designed all nine classes and their abilities from scratch and originated the talent system. First-hand accounts give a more shared picture. In a 2010 interview reported by Engadget, Tom Chilton said that he himself built the talent trees for every class in the months before launch, while Jordan, whom Chilton called "our other class designer," focused on making sure every class had spells and abilities all the way to level 60 and on pacing when players learned each one. Chilton also said Rob Pardo and Mike Heiberg worked in the same area. Taken together, the sources agree that Jordan was the main designer of the classes' ability kits in the original game.

Warcraft Wiki states that he kept working on classes through Wrath of the Lich King, leaving around 2010. He was one of the speakers at the World of Warcraft class discussion panel at BlizzCon 2007.

Interviews about Classic

The 2019 launch of World of Warcraft Classic brought renewed interest in how the original classes came to be, and Jordan gave several long interviews. In October 2018 he appeared on the Countdown to Classic podcast to talk about classes and abilities, and he returned in March 2019 for episodes on warriors and the Ahn'Qiraj raid, on mages, and on druids, loot trading and Alterac Valley. Topics covered across these episodes included how talents and talent trees were designed, why warriors ended up so strong, the problems with Retribution and Protection paladins, and class ideas that never shipped, such as early demon hunter, necromancer, bard and runemaster concepts. He also spoke about class design on the ClassiCast show hosted by Esfand in 2018.

In-game tributes

Several names in the original game refer to Jordan and his family. Warcraft Wiki, citing his own comments on ClassiCast and the Countdown to Classic podcast, lists:

Watcher Jordan, a member of the Night Watch who patrols the road south of Darkshire in Duskwood.
[Staff of Jordan], an epic staff that drops anywhere in the world for characters level 35 and up. The WoW Diary by John Staats also identifies it as a reference to him.
[Penelope's Rose], an off-hand item rewarded by the quest Kirtonos the Herald in Scholomance, named after his first daughter.
Jordan, one of Greatfather Winter's reindeer, mentioned in [Metzen's Letters and Notes] during the Feast of Winter Veil.

Later items such as the Sash of Jordan, Lola's Eve and Charlotte's Ivy are also references to him and his daughters, but they are not part of patch 1.12. Jordan has said that the Stone of Jordan ring from Diablo II was not named after him.

The Scholomance loading screen. The dungeon's quest for Penelope's Rose is named after his daughter. © Blizzard Entertainment

Later career

After Blizzard, Jordan worked as a systems designer. MCV reported in 2017 that he had worked on the digital card game Hex: Shards of Fate and on Obsidian Entertainment's role-playing game Tyranny, and that he had joined Gamera Interactive as a systems designer for the action RPG Alaloth: Champions of the Four Kingdoms. At that point MCV described him as having about 18 years of industry experience. He also streams on Twitch and posts about game design on YouTube.