Ok… about streamers, especially Classic WoW streamers.
First off, not going to defend any streamer here, but they are currently streamers for a game that is currently not out yet. That is the biggest problem. But lets look at Classic WoW streamers.
For the most part before the announcement, Classic WoW was solely private server content. This was against ToS for twitch. You could skirt by and stream it, but if you kept doing it chances are you’d get hit with a ban depending if Blizzard looked your way.
So, after Classic WoW was announced people started to naturally fill the gap of “Classic WoW Content Creators.” Why? Because Classic is going to be a big deal, at least for the first couple of months. But… alas, we go back to our main problem. The game isn’t out yet.
So, the first really big streamer was Esfand who broke out of the private server shell. He was a “community” figure of private servers as indicated in his videos. He had the backing of the “Vanilla WoW Fans”. He had some issues with Blizzard but started to get big on youtube and twitch. Others saw this success.
Staysafe is another person. He was known in the private server community it seems. Not as large as Esfand, but made some youtube videos or at least tried to make some early videos.
Now… TipsOut. TipsOut is a nice guy. Extremely nice dare I say. But he was unknown. He broke into /r/classic WoW with very little if any private server background. His youtube channel was unknown. He said he played Vanilla and started on the 24th of November 2004, but never hit level 60.
People naturally questioned that with “how can you play for two years and not hit sixty”?
He came out with a few more videos and guides and then he made a long forum post saying he lost his job, was extremely sad and needed to step away. A few days later he comes back with a patreon and decides he’s going to be a Classic content creator full time.
So that’s a brief background to my knowledge on those guys. Now… why do people not like them.
I’ll use this example. Say you have a relative who is old as heck. They served in World War 2. But then you have someone else who is extremely well read in World War 2. Both have different knowledge about the same subject, firsthand and secondhand.
Esfand, Staysafe, and Tipsout, as far as I know, didn’t get very far in Vanilla. Is that bad? No. But to some people, they feel that is disingenuous. What they have done is become extremely well versed in Vanilla through digesting patch notes and other things. So their experience is through private servers, forum posts, and patch notes. But not many first-hand 2004-2006 experiences.
So… going back to the first and main problem. The game isn’t out yet. How do you make content for a game that isn’t released? How do you write a book review for a novel that isn’t published? Well… it’s hard.
And therefore we get videos of BluePosts, videos of speculations, videos of opinions and thoughts. These guys have decided to take a leap of faith and try out streaming and stepping away from a “normal” job and go with their passion. So, they need to do all they can to earn a living. And if there is no game… we get where we are now.
I suspect when the game launches, we’ll see more content from all of the creators. Most of them have molded themselves into personality streamers, so people come back due to them and not the content they produce.
Anywho, apologies for any errors in the post.