Mark Kern

Mark Kern is an American game producer who was team lead of World of Warcraft during its original development. He joined Blizzard Entertainment in 1997, produced StarCraft and Diablo II, and left in 2005 to co-found Red 5 Studios. In 2016 he became the best-known public advocate for official servers running the original version of World of Warcraft, a campaign that preceded World of Warcraft Classic.

Education and early career

Kern studied cognitive science at the University of Rochester, graduating with a bachelor's degree in 1992. He then earned a law degree (Juris Doctor) from Boston University School of Law in 1995, where he was an editor on the school's Journal of Science and Technology Law.

He joined Blizzard in 1997 as an associate producer on StarCraft. He went on to produce StarCraft 64, the Nintendo 64 version, and Diablo II (2000).

Work on World of Warcraft

Kern was team lead for World of Warcraft. In a 2004 interview with Yahoo's Games Domain, published a few months before launch, he described the job as helping to set the team's goals and priorities and acting as a bridge between the development team and the rest of the company. He said Diablo II had prepared him best for the role, because it was Blizzard's first game that needed game servers.

In the same interview he talked about the game's quest system and its effort to fill every zone with things to do. He said the team's priority at that stage of the beta was player-versus-player play, and that Blizzard had opened a dedicated PvP test server to gather feedback on class balance.

Kern later told stories about the team in interviews. On the "Fishing with Crendor" podcast in 2018 he recalled that Jeff Kaplan, known as a demanding raid leader in EverQuest, was so apologetic in person when he joined Blizzard that the team set up a "sorry jar" for every time he apologized.

Kern left Blizzard in 2005, the year after the game launched.

Red 5 Studios

After Blizzard, Kern co-founded Red 5 Studios with three other former Blizzard employees and served as its CEO. The studio's main project was Firefall, an online shooter. Reports from the period described heavy spending on promotion, and in 2013 Red 5's board removed Kern as CEO.

He founded MEK Entertainment in 2014, which raised $1 million in seed funding for a virtual reality MMO. In 2016 he began crowdfunding Em-8er, which he described as a spiritual successor to Firefall.

Campaign for original servers

In 2016 Blizzard shut down Nostalrius, a popular fan-run server that recreated the original World of Warcraft. Kern became the main spokesman for the players who wanted Blizzard to offer official servers of the original game, and he supported the Nostalrius petition. In interviews he disputed Blizzard's view that such servers were close to impossible to offer, pointing out that he had worked directly on World of Warcraft licensing while at the company.

In May 2016 he met Blizzard president Mike Morhaime to discuss the request. Afterward Kern said Blizzard had made no promises and was in "listen mode." Blizzard announced World of Warcraft Classic at BlizzCon 2017, and it launched in August 2019.

Kern had been active in game industry politics before. In 2012 he started League4Gamers, a group opposing the Stop Online Piracy Act and the PROTECT IP Act. In 2019, after Blizzard penalized a Hearthstone player for supporting the Hong Kong protests during an official stream, Kern said he had quit World of Warcraft and called for a boycott of Blizzard.

In-game tribute

[Mark of Kern] is a rare ring that drops at random from monsters in Scarlet Monastery, such as the Scarlet Beastmaster. In Classic it requires level 31 and gives Stamina and 20 attack power. Warcraft Wiki notes that the ring is named after Kern, the game's original team lead.

Sources

• Mark Kern (Wikipedia)
• Mark Kern (Warcraft Wiki)
• Mark of Kern (Warcraft Wiki)
• World of Warcraft Interview (GameBanshee, June 2004)
• Interview: World of Warcraft (Neowin)
• Mike Morhaime meets with legacy WoW server representative Mark Kern (PCGamesN)
• Fishing with Crendor Ep 44: Mark Kern (YouTube, 2018)