Jeff Kaplan 'really wanted WoW to be first-person'

Former Blizzard vice president and game designer Jeff Kaplan said during a 10-hour stream of his new studio's upcoming frontier survival game, The Legend of California, that in WoW's early days he "really wanted WoW to be first-person" and that "I argued a lot for that." He acknowledged that there are "a lot of arguments" for WoW's third-person perspective, such as the benefit of having a full view of your character.

Kaplan traced his preference to EverQuest: "EQ was all first-person, and weirdly, because it was first-person, I saw my guildmates up close way more. And I feel like I saw and appreciated the character art way more," adding, "I wasn't seeing myself, but I knew other people were seeing me that close, so in EQ I actually cared what my character looked like more than I did in WoW." Imagining a first-person WoW prompts several questions: would it have reached the same level of landmark success?

How would its systems and mechanics differ to account for a changed sense of—and relationship with—the game's spaces?

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