Becoming a Creative Master of the WoW Universe

You want to work for Blizzard and be a World of Warcraft game designer - your dream job, alongside thousands of other dreamers. It can’t be that hard: You’ve played every mmog out there, you’ve lead one of the biggest guilds - on your server, you have a knack for the lore and play well with others, which believe it or not is important. Maybe, you’re taking this serious and whipped out a few playable mods that pass for half-decent. If you really mean business, you afked for a bit and are equipped with a degree in something other than played investment. But you lack the experience and there is plenty of it competing for the same dream… How do you stand out from the masses, what gives you your best chance? Well, having Rob Pardo as your guild leader doesn’t hurt.

That is exactly how it happened for Tigole, Jeffrey Kaplan - who currently wears a lead designer hat on World of Warcraft.

Q: How did you make the transition from cynical uber EQ junkie to getting a paycheck working on the hottest MMORPG around? What exactly do you do at Blizzard and what specific areas of the game do you focus on?

A: In EQ, I joined a guild called “Legacy of Steel” and eventually became an officer of that guild. Legacy of Steel was the top guild on the server I was playing on and one of the top guilds in the game, serverwide, but we didn’t have a Web site. So, the guild leader at the time, Ariel, asked me to start posting Web updates, which I did. However, I soon found that just writing about the guild’s most recent kills got boring, so I started branching out into other areas, including writing in-depth design suggestions.

I eventually became Legacy of Steel’s guild leader because Ariel was becoming too busy at work, and during my tenure, I led the guild to a number of server firsts as well as a few serverwide firsts, seconds, and thirds. Ariel would still log in and play occasionally, though, and we would often chat about games. Well, as it turned out, Ariel was Rob Pardo, who is now the vice president of game design at Blizzard.

Eventually, World of Warcraft was unveiled, and the position of quest designer opened up. The job description matched my background perfectly: passion for games, experienced MMO player, Master’s Degree in Creative Writing. Of couse, I applied, and after a rigorous series of interviews and tests, I was accepted on as one of the original two quest designers on World of Warcraft. As part of the design team, I quickly branched into other areas of world design, and I’ve worn many hats over the course of the game’s development.

Interview by the safehouse in the fall of 04.

Tigole has proven to me, and I would think most players familiar with his career that he is capable of developing meaningful content, but his story on how he got to where he is today is like someone who won a big lottery. He certainly had the credentials for having the ability to write creatively when applying for the quest design position, but knowing Rob Pardo was the clear factor to get his foot into the door - sometimes the old adage is very true: it’s more about who you know. If you want to read some advice about breaking into the industry from someone who knows what they are talking about, check out Damion Schubert’s advice, a lead developer on Bioware’s upcoming mmog.