Blizzard's Jeff Kaplan blocked from the WAR Beta, notes server imbalances
If you assumed that Jeff Kaplan, the game director of World of Warcraft, would have been an active participant in the Warhammer Online Beta ... well, you'd be wrong. Despite Kaplan's position, connections throughout the industry, and enthusiasm for the genre he and a number of other Blizzard employees were excluded from the Warhammer Online closed beta. MTV's Tracey John continues her string of insider-info articles on the employees and practices of Blizzard Entertainment, noting Kaplan's good relationship with Paul Barnett. In a response to the initial posting of the article, Mythic head Mark Jacobs wrote in saying that "it was Mythic's company policy to not allow competing games' developers into "Warhammer"'s closed betas. Jacobs also said he would've been happy to have any Blizzard staffers join the open beta but was unaware of a specific request to do so."
John also asks the WoW honcho about his opinion of Warhammer as it is post-launch. Kaplan, like many players, is working with a Destruction character and is finding the game's population imbalance a bit frustrating. "I'm at the point where I'm thinking about quitting because it feels like the best way to level up is in the battlegrounds ... it takes me 30 to 45 minutes to get in the battleground queue," he said. Check out the brief interview for more on Kaplan's view of Warhammer, and head over to Broken Toys for some background on this exchange via Scott Jennings.
