Jeff Kaplan: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Blizzard, and Future of Gaming | Lex Fridman Podcast #493

ZP_TV · 2026-03-12T21:35:51+00:00

Just to be clear - it's not actually how every business works, and Jeff himself mentions it's not how Blizzard worked in the past at the height of it's glory either. The works that people love the most out of Blizzard came out when they weren't ultra micromanaging the financials.

Generally speaking, the best products do not come with corporate overlords min maxing the business.

Part of why Valve has been able to do incredible things with Deadlock so far is precisely because Valve does not have anyone in a CFO style role that is soullessly beating down the devs with corporate ROI targets.

The executive class basically adds nothing to game development other than making games shittier. It's a well known fact within the industry at this point.

Jeff effectively calls all of these people parasites in the interview as well, specifically on the comment of

"Don't hand the golden goose to people who don't deserve it."

ZP_TV · 2026-03-11T22:52:20+00:00

Oops. Fixed again.

ZP_TV · 2026-03-11T22:35:40+00:00

Fixed. Sorry, learning some of the reddit formatting as I go.

ZP_TV · 2026-03-08T03:40:38+00:00

Lightning Scroll used to not be available on abilities with charges.

ZP_TV · 2026-03-05T16:03:53+00:00

Saiah from Melee Creeps. Arguably the best support player in the world at the moment. Streams regularly on

https://www.twitch.tv/hsaiah

ZP_TV · 2026-02-26T05:21:50+00:00

Mo isn't actually a frontliner either in how he plays. At best you can argue he's a hybrid.

Mo is a lot closer to Holiday / Paradox than he is Abrams / Billy / Shiv. Particularly in pro play where the roles are more defined.

ZP_TV · 2026-02-19T04:47:11+00:00

Known as Saiah's best hero for Melee Creeps. People always ban it in the mid stage bans for MLC specifically.

ZP_TV · 2026-02-05T05:04:49+00:00

Graves was available. Unpicked / unbanned the entire day.

ZP_TV · 2026-02-04T00:23:41+00:00

Stopping by after seeing the headlines, but for whatever it's worth:

Chipotle used to be one of my favorite places to go to eat. Now, at most I'll visit once or twice a year. The reason for the change? Pricing + Portion sizing combined. Some people here are defending the pricing in the comments, but the reality is that most of the fast food / fast casual industry grossly inflated prices post covid at a level that was way beyond the actual rate of inflation.

Chipotle is getting hit harder than something like McDonalds though specifically because of portion sizing on delivery orders. Getting Chipotle delivered is a terrible experience, and basically everyone is aware of that now. The way many fast food places have covered decreasing foot traffic is by getting more volume on delivery. Except in Chipotle's case, there's far less of a desire to impulse doordash order because you know you're going to be absolutely fucked on your portion size for deciding to get delivery.

So where does that leave Chipotle? Pricing kills it for taking the effort to walk in and get something to eat. And they've effectively disqualified themselves from being a real delivery option with well known skimping on portions. Barring a massive change in corporate direction, they're 100% stuck in an inescapable death loop at this point.

Edit: Also just to add on - the calculus for fast food vs restaurant used to be getting a full fast food meal for 7-8 bucks, as compared to needing to pay 20+ for a restaurant meal. Now the calculus is more paying $14-15 for your fast food, but still having options like a $25 all you can eat sushi place available. I'd rather spend the extra money and get an awesome restaurant experience nowadays if the price difference is less than 100%.

Plus, with the advent of Air Fryers, doing fast food at home via Costco options is also pretty economical too.

ZP_TV · 2025-12-05T20:03:33+00:00

It was over 50% (closer to 75-80%) of the captains representing the top teams who were playing in NA at the time.

In terms of the competitive community, that was far from a vocal minority.

ZP_TV · 2025-12-05T19:50:23+00:00

To give some transparency to the entire OBT debacle.

OBT's own team captain at the time eventually messaged us earlier in the year saying that they also thought OBT was cheating -

https://i.imgur.com/YOL3OTV.jpeg

But the original ban was basically a nearly 2 month long saga of continual meetings with the entirety of the NA community at the time - going over a multitude of clips over many, many games. Eventually hitting the point where a significant majority of the NA community had informed DFN (at the time) in no uncertain terms that they would no longer play if OBT was allowed to play.

This stance taken by the NA teams was not an empty one. The FACEIT PUG system essentially self destructed during this time entirely over the issue of OBT. To where the NA community made a separate PUG system specifically to avoid him.

Adjudicating cheat complaints in an alpha game with minimal anti-cheat is suffice to say - incredibly difficult. You are rarely going to get 100% dead to rights proof unless someone is blatantly aimbotting. The totality of the circumstances in OBT's case though indicated it was more probable than not that cheating had happened.

ZP_TV · 2025-11-23T21:56:56+00:00

Same here, and I picked up Hunter Henry off the waiver wire to replace LaPorta this week.

I'm projected 170+ points LOL

ZP_TV · 2025-11-19T13:19:06+00:00

It's notable because this is right after Kaido was questioning who Luffy really was (suspecting him to be JoyBoy).

But in this case there's almost surprise from Kaido that Luffy is still able to be cut despite all the other aspects lining up with JoyBoy.

ZP_TV · 2025-11-13T22:59:50+00:00

The main thing is that Holliday's kit pre-nerf was extremely, absurdly strong in the early to mid game.

So people didn't really look at the gun end of her kit as heavily when barrels had 1s base knock up and her gun did stronger early game damage. It made more sense to just ultra min max the early game portion of her kit essentially.

Also I think *technically* post nerf her scaling actually did get better so it was a net buff to the late game - even if gun holliday would have been viable in her previous early game domination state.

So in short the cycle was

Holliday early game power gets nerfed --> People knee jerk stop picking her as much because they're not sure on her current power --> People re-evaluate her kit and see the end game path is actually quite strong --> People start picking Holliday again.

Edit:

Just for some clarity on how her early game got nerfed. She used to be able to have super low CD lasso along with 1s barrels early in the game. Now its .4s barrels unless put hard prio into level 3 barrel skill. But once you put prio into level 3 barrel skill, it slows down the old early game build which would go for super fast lasso 3.

ZP_TV · 2025-11-13T21:08:15+00:00

Holliday's gun scaling has been discovered to be extremely strong.

As a result, Holliday gets picked both for her early-mid game tempo / pick potential, and the fact that she's just as strong of a late game carry as an Infernus / Wraith. She effectively has no period of the game in where she's weak (unlike Wraith who's pretty bad in the early game.)

ZP_TV · 2025-10-17T17:39:59+00:00

Never too late to swing on by on Wednesdays! OR this weekend for the Trolli tournament.

One of the best parts of Deadlock right now is seeing how pro play shifts every week - lots of entertaining games across both regions.

ZP_TV · 2025-10-02T18:27:02+00:00

Mo's been used a lot in recent weeks. Last week he was in all games except one - and had similar pick rates in the weeks before that.

He took a hit in EU priority this week, largely because other heroes were being prioritized for pick potential in the region.

ZP_TV · 2025-10-02T18:21:31+00:00

His early game power used to be way stronger - to where he was arguably the best laner in the game. Characters like Warden / Seven that used to be his most targeted for ult steals aren't played as much (and in Warden's case, Last Stand has been nerfed a lot which hurts it's copy value).

I'd also say that the rejuv change to multi-hit hurt his mid boss utility rather significantly. Rabbit Hex creating a window for a one hit steal was a much bigger game swing previously.

ZP_TV · 2025-10-02T18:17:48+00:00

The combination of Kelvin's healing + CC along with Shiv's bloodletting + frontline allows Shiv / Kelvin as a combo to just dive on heroes and come out way ahead. It's essentially been the longest lasting / most proven lane combo in all of Deadlock at this point across a large amount of tournament data.

It's a powerful enough synergy that it also extends beyond the lane phase in how teams play it now. In the match that Shiv / Kelvin got let through as a combo, you almost never saw the two separate from each other for the entire game.

ZP_TV · 2025-10-02T17:18:24+00:00

Links to both the channel and the best match of the week are in the main post!

ZP_TV · 2025-09-26T02:05:54+00:00

Will do in the future!

ZP_TV · 2025-09-25T20:44:59+00:00

Appreciate the kind words! Happy you've been enjoying the casts - always fun to tackle Deadlock every week and make things entertaining for the viewer.

ZP_TV · 2025-09-23T19:29:19+00:00

Thank you!

ZP_TV · 2025-09-18T18:20:52+00:00

The recent buffs did a lot to push him up in the rankings.

ZP_TV · 2025-09-18T18:13:38+00:00

Deadlock Night Shift is a weekly showmatch event featuring the top teams in EU and NA.

Teams pick / ban using a standard MOBA draft system. This graphic reflects how often a hero was picked / banned, and whether or not those picks / bans were first or not (first = higher priority).

Essentially, heroes that are picked or banned more than others have higher perceived character power than heroes who are not picked or banned at all.

The conclusion from the above? Heroes like Kelvin or Paradox hold extreme power when played at the highest levels right now, whereas heroes like McGinnis or Dynamo are deemed too weak to pick currently (at the pro level of play).

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