The Upgrades Have Arrived! | Weekly Update

Hey everyone! Well this is going to be a _sweaty_ week. A rather silly amount of Ikea stuff has arrived for the office. It had been a little sparse, especially my recording room, so this stuff should help quite a bit. You’ll eventually see updates to the set, perhaps even a second set and better lighting.

As for the game dev crew, well they’re getting a chunky conference table, have already got a TV for playtesting sessions, and will now have a sofa!

We’re well on our way from the bedroom based organisation that we started as. There’s quite a lot on the backburner, and quite a few projects in progress, much of which I’ll share with you in the first quarter of 2019. (I’d love to go earlier, but I don’t want to announce stuff that mightn’t come to fruition!)

Warcraft

Patch 8.1 is this week! Overall I’m feeling decent - I’m probably going to get my main up to around 370 average item level, and then begin levelling up my 110 alts through the Battle for Azeroth content.

I’m a little worried that this patch won’t, as Acti themselves said of Destiny 2 Forsaken, “represent a core re-engage”. I’m just not sure that the patch brings content that’ll feel new enough to excite lapsed players, other than the raiders, as Battle for Dazar’alor appears to be excellent.

Patch 8.2 really is our big hope. Blizzard said very encouraging things about it, especially with the goal of replayable systems driven gameplay on Nazjatar. As I said in the news, I estimate that this is going to release in mid-April. There’ll likely be a few months of decreased interest in playing World of Warcraft while we wait, but it’s worth remembering that the patch news cycle will likely span most of Q1 2019 due to the PTR.

The 8.2 PTR represents Blizzards next large chance to get players on side, and we’re likely going to see that in January of February.

Format

The first parts of our updated format have appeared! You may have noticed the new panel assets that we’re using. I’m quite happy with how they look - ultimately it makes the videos feel more unique, and I think better sells the fantasy of the game. As much as I’ve been a big fan of slapping Gaussian blur in things, I do think that an overly ‘clean’ visual style can feel cold and lacking in character.

We’re going to work on more assets in that vein, with an updated end-card being the next target.

The Team

I’ve recently brought both Jess and Matt onto the team. Not in such a way that it’ll take away from their game development work though.

Currently Jess is helping with creating those new assets, creating thumbnails and doing edit reviews. She’ll be able to bring a keener aesthetic eye to the channel and increase the quality of our videos.

Matt is going to be more involved in footage capture. You might have noticed that we often over-rely on B-Roll. That’s mainly because I find myself not really having the time to get as specific footage as I’d like. Most of that is because my focus is typically on writing & idea generation. Well, with Matt helping out, videos should be pulling from a wider pool of more tailored and relevant footage.

Okay, that’s where we’re at! 

...time to get started on this tremendous pile of Fjallbos...