Back before World of Warcraft launched, in 2004, the template for quests in an MMORPG was a little dry. Games like EverQuest were primarily inspired by text-based MUDs, where you didn't need much incentive to go out and kill things. For World of Warcraft, that wasn't going to work.

When Dinoflask first started making comedy videos of Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan, he never could've imagined he'd one day be surprising the man himself to celebrate his 15th anniversary at Blizzard. Heck, he could barely believe it right before it happened.

How many of the people who make games fear some of the people who play them? That question drove conversations last week among quite a few game developers, and over the weekend, Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan offered his own take: A lots.

Become a better Overwatch player with this one neat trick: Being nice. You'll get results almost instantly!

At yesterday's New York Overwatch event, in a rented-out space in midtown Manhattan, Overwatch game director Jeff Kaplan stood in front of a slide showcasing an old Egyptian woman, an autistic Indian woman, a bodybuilding Russian woman, a plump Chinese woman and a Mexican hacker woman. "One thing that we did with the game that was very important to us was to challenge stereotypes," Kaplan said. "If you look across modern shooters in 2017... to think that we have a mother who's Egyptian... that's not a common thread that you're gonna see," he explained proudly.

It's no secret that Overwatch players are precious about the game's balance changes. On the internet, fans act as armchair game devs, flooding the Overwatch forums with strongly-worded opinions whenever there's an unpopular or surprising change. Most recently, the forums overflowed with salt after the popular tank hero D.Va received a brutal nerf, making her far less powerful. For months, players begged Blizzard to revive the old D.Va.

These videos are the best.

Overwatch game director Jeff Kaplan is full of surprises. For example, it turns out that he's a Hanzo apologist. And, at one point, he considered a cat in a jetpack as an original Overwatch hero. There's still time, my man. We want that cat hero.

In recent times, a YouTuber named Dinoflask has dedicated their life to mashing up videos of Overwatch's Jeff Kaplan, turning them into everything from enraged rants to stories of Kaplan drunkenly pretending to be Junkrat's ult at a party. It's masterful work. Even Kaplan himself appreciates it.

"We don't expect Sombra to ever be a vicious assassin," Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan once said. Players seem to agree: Sombra is not typically understood to be a competitively "viable" character. One player took that notion as a challenge, and the result is beautiful.

Jeff Kaplan has done a lot of explaining on camera about Overwatch, and the community has been grateful. Very grateful.

Overwatch has already had a pretty big launch year. But 2017 isn't shaping up too badly either, if some of the announced features are any indication.

Overwatch fans' investigation into the identity of unreleased stealth hero Sombra is moving slowly, even after game director Jeff Kaplan personally gave them a push along. Over 5000 Overwatch fans have been working to solve the puzzle since Wednesday without much success.

Overwatch has been out for a couple months now, and the honeymoon period is over. Competitive mode is a divisive subject, and game balance has been a rollercoaster. Meanwhile, there's been controversy around things like hero skins and, er, porn. I quizzed game director Jeff Kaplan about all of it.

The decision to remove Tracer's over-the-shoulder pose from Overwatch has been a hot topic over the last 24 hours, prompting complaints, debates and petitions about the pose and the way Blizzard has handled the situation.

But Overwatch's director, Jeff Kaplan, has no qualms with the choice whatsoever. In fact, according to a clarification late this afternoon, removing the now-contentious pose was actually easy.

The Overwatch beta might be shutting down for the holidays, but in the latest developer update game director Jeff Kaplan revealed some of the lessons the team has learned -- and why traditional progression systems haven't worked so far.

It's fine to want to promote competition within your own game, but there's a reason smart developers wait before attaching the word eSports to their games. eSports comes with a certain set of expectations, and when your game isn't even released it's probably better to avoid using the word entirely.