Hired players with a lot of knowledge from the forum as new employees

earthpressnews

The story of Jeff Kaplan at Blizzard is legendary: Actually, a feared forum troll, Blizzard became aware of the 30-year-old Kaplan and gave him a job. He would later shape WoW and Overwatch. Bungie is following similar footsteps and has recruited a weapons expert for Destiny 2 directly from the Reddit forum.

What was it like at Blizzard back then?

  • The story is now legendary: Kaplan played the original MMORPG Everquest around 2000 under the name “Tigole”: He was a hardcore player who achieved everything in the MMORPG with his guild, but liked to talk about the weaknesses and problems of Everquest left out.
  • One of his guild members was Rob Pardo, one of the founders of Blizzard, who noticed Kaplan and offered him a job in the then young company.
  • Kaplan became a celebrated game designer at Blizzard in the 19 years that followed, working on WoW and Overwatch and later leaving the company as one of Blizzard’s most popular employees.
    • Jeff Kaplan.

    Destiny gets renowned weapons experts directly from the forum

    This is how an expert found a job at Destiny: In the early days of Bungie, content creator Mercules drew attention to himself with long posts about weapons. He earned a reputation as the fandom’s greatest expert on weapons.

    We’ve often quoted Mercules’ opinion on weapons on MeinMMO, especially around 2017, when we needed to break down complex mechanics in the chronically under-explained Destiny, such as mobility.

    In contrast to Kaplan, who also impressed with his performance but attracted attention with his harsh troll posts, Mercules maintained a much more moderate tone. Bungie became aware of Mercules as early as 2019, and together with YouTuber Holtzmann, Bungie hired him as a consultant and expert, but at that time only for a limited period of time.

    Destiny 2: Guardians shares how a gaming friendship changed his life

    More videos

    Autoplay

    In March 2022, Merucules finally proudly announced that today he had his first job as Associate Weapon Designer at Bungie. The permanent position was a dream come true.

    Since then, he has frequently spoken out on social media and in interviews when it comes to the topic of weapons, most recently with Necrochasm.

    Recommended editorial content

    At this point you will find external content from Twitter that complements the article.

    View Twitter content

    I agree to external content being displayed to me. Personal data may be transmitted to third-party platforms. Read more about our privacy policy.

    Born and raised in the Destiny subreddit

    How did he get the job? Mercules says (via reddit) that a forum also played a big role for him. He posted his weapon analyzes on reddit and someone at Bungie noticed him and recommended him.

    Looking back, he says: He was born in the Destiny subreddit and was formed there. He now hopes to make the fans proud.

    Bungie had already used reddit in the past, in 2015 (via gamerant): Community manager Cosmo originally founded reddit. However, this has not changed the current difficult situation between Bungie and the community.

    At Bungie, the relationship with the community has been severely damaged since individual members of the player base changed their tone and even made death threats against individual employees and their families. Bungie didn’t put up with that and has severely restricted communication since then:

    Destiny 2: Community manager quits after death threat – Bungie: “Don’t expect any more answers”

    mmod-game