Update: Epic Times

What a busy few weeks! We have been making massive changes behind the scenes - most of which you’ll see very soon through the BTS video series.

So, what’s happened?

The New Set

As many will have noticed, we have a new set! Yep, the Warcraft channel and variety channel now have a very different look. I think the cleaner look of the gaming channel suits variety quite well, which the more warm look of the Warcraft one work well for the RPG focus. It also helps cut down on confusion.

Of course, having to swap cameras and lights around would suck, so we’re soon going to have two sets of lights and cameras so that both sets are a one button solution. IE I’m able to sit down, hit a single button and get recording. Now that we’re productions 5-10 bits of content a week, it’s really important that all those small interactions are as smooth as they possibly can be.

This has also extended to the new thumbnail style! I think it’s more generically applicable to games of varying styles, and again, it’s nice to have some visual differentiation between the channels.

Warcraft Update

We’re in a somewhat unavoidable slow period in the WoW news cycle. I have a lot of evergreen content planned, but it takes time to get that all scripted out, so we have had a slightly more sparse upload schedule over the past two weeks. That’ll be back to normal next week, and looking past that, I don’t think it’ll be too long until we see Patch 8.2 on the PTR.

Patch 8.2 really could be the saviour of Battle for Azeroth. Everything that I have heard about it thus far has been fantastic, and even though I haven’t been that excited about the game lately, I do find myself looking forward to it. It seems like the combination of benching the faction war and all the new design goals could really have 8.2 feeling like a mini expansion, which is very exciting indeed!

Variety Channel Update

Channel 2 continues to do well! This has been really exciting for our team, and has led to us investigating a number avenues for it. We have far more solidified ideas about the various types of videos that’ll exist there, and more ambitious plans for what it could end up being. One thing is quite clear though: I want it to be more than just day to day news coverage. I think that coverage is very important, and will definitely be a fixture of the channel, but there is a lot more to gaming than the immediate headlines. They don't capture the breath and depth of our hobby.

Getting that going will take some time, and I’ll update you when we have more solidified ideas.

Variety Patreon

As time goes on the second channel is going to develop it’s own audience. We are also planning more ‘premium’ content - in depth reports, larger reviews, video essays etc. This is going to require team expansion, so we are going to launch a Patreon for that channel.

My current thought is that all main Patreon content will be mirrored - so all BTS, all posts & all early access videos go on both channels. As for credits, well I’d rather not clog them up, so we’d probably have Warcraft credits for the WoW channel, and variety credits for the variety channel.

Overall, everyone should get everything, and there will never be a reason to subscribe to both Patreons - that would feel very unfair, in my view.

There is the chance for there being a $25 tier on the variety channel. That would have to be different to the WoW one. We have some ideas of what that could look like. Right now I think we would offer each individual physical item tier, and then a higher tier (perhaps $40) that includes the physical items from both - so gaming stuff & Warcraft stuff. That’s quite a bit off though, and we’d need to work out the economics.

Having the WoW one do so well has been fantastic, allowing us to include a lot more than we initially thought we could.

So, that's where we’re at! There are two vlogs on the way, and lots more after that.