One of the funniest humiliations of ex-boss Jeff Kaplan will be part of Overwatch 2 and will forever remind us of the old Game Director.
Even though Jeff Kaplan has left Blizzard and thus the Overwatch team, the developers commemorate him in Overwatch 2 – reminding us of a small humiliation but also one of the most entertaining moments at Blizzard.
Who is Jeff Kaplan? Jeff Kaplan was a long-time employee at Blizzard and worked on the major projects. He was one of the original quest designers for World of Warcraft and notably responsible for particularly notorious quests like “The Green Hills of Stranglethorn.” In Overwatch, he held a leadership position for a long time as Game Director and was quite the figurehead until recently, when Aaron Keller took over and Jeff left Blizzard.
What kind of Easter egg is this? In the new map “New York,” which was presented during a PvP demonstration of Overwatch 2 with major changes, there are two little Easter eggs that remind us of the former Game Director Jeff Kaplan. In one of the subway lines, there is a coffee cup with the inscription “Jeph,” which sits on the book “The Green Hills of Stranglethorn” by Hemet Nesingwary.
Both are direct references to Jeff Kaplan.
What does this refer to? The coffee cup and the book are separate references to different eras of his work.
The book is a reminder of Kaplan’s time as a quest designer at World of Warcraft. The quest “The Green Hills of Stranglethorn” was one of the most dreaded tasks in the original WoW, as it took an extremely long time to complete. Players had to collect many pages of a book that could be dropped by all creatures in a very large area.
However, there were no restrictions on which pages dropped or how often. So, for example, one could have dozens of copies of “Page 2” in their inventory without ever getting the missing “Page 23.” Many players realized too late that they could trade pages with other players, which significantly simplified the process.
The cup with the inscription “Jeph” – an apparently misspelled version of Jeff – is, on the other hand, a reference to a photo that gained fame on Twitter. In 2017, a Starbucks opened on the Blizzard campus, where Kaplan immediately got a coffee. The employee apparently had no idea who he was standing in front of and simply wrote the name phonetically. Jeff “Jeph” Kaplan’s facial expression with the cup in hand says it all.
Blizzard is known for immortalizing employees or special fans in games from time to time. In World of Warcraft, there are numerous items dedicated to individual players.
In any case, a cool gesture that will likely remind long-time Blizzard fans of the Game Director whenever they see the cup and book in Overwatch 2.
