Interview: Madseasonshow on Classic WoW and his Youtube career

Time for another interview with a content creator! This time I had a chat with Madseasonshow, “a World of Warcraft channel with a focus on Legion expansion guides, gold farming, tips, tricks and more!” Madseasonshow recently created a documentary covering the entire history of World of Warcraft. This 43 minute video covered the game from pre-launch (1999) till the current day (2018). According to many viewers (including us), this documentary does a better job explaining its history than the the “other” documentary posted two days after by Wired. As a person who tends to tickle my nostalgia bone (no, I don’t wear “rose tinted glasses”) with his videos talking about old content, I was eager to hear his story, WoW Classic, BFA and his plans for the future going forward.

Greetings Madseasonshow, thanks for doing this interview with us! First of all, how are you doing?

I’m doing well! With the recent news about the 1.12 Classic servers, patch 8.0, and BFA releasing soon I’m very excited for the future.

Can you tell us a bit about yourself and when you got started?

I started doing Youtube around late 2014. I was playing a game called Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel and just randomly decided to make guides for it. People liked them, so I bounced between a few games doing the same thing. Around the middle of 2015 I noticed people enjoyed my World of Warcraft guides in particular, so it just sort of stuck. I had been playing the game for 10 years at this point, so it made sense to make that the focus of the channel, and I’ve been making videos about it ever since(over 500 to this date!).

Amazing job on your documentary on the history of World of Warcraft! I bet you must have spent a lot of time on that video (research, recording and editing). Can you tell me a bit about the process and how long you’ve been working on that video?

Between all of the research, script writing, voice-over and actual editing it took me a few weeks I’d say. I first thought of the idea because I occasionally get comments on my channel from viewers who have never played WoW due to the time investment needed. I thought it would be a good idea to bring these people in the loop and give them a look at perhaps one of the most influential games of all time. The game had such a huge impact on the gaming industry and myself as an individual that I just felt like I had to share it with everyone. Even if it’s just through a retelling in a video, I wanted people to say they’ve at least experienced the game in some way.

What are the odds of another documentary covering the same subject going live two days after you have posted yours! Has this affected your video in any form?

That was quite the coincidence! I think it didn’t affect my video too much. The Wired documentary seemed to be more from a developer standpoint, whereas mine is more from a player’s perspective. It’s interesting to see where the two versions differ, and it actually answered some questions that my video left open. I think people will get a pretty different experience from both videos, which is good!

On your channel you have several videos going into the vanilla/classic aspects of the game. Since when have you started playing World of Warcraft and what was your first character?

I started playing a few months late back in March of 2005. I was already playing another MMO called “Star Wars Galaxies”(SWG). Slowly but surely, all of my friends were quitting for this new blockbuster MMO called World of Warcraft. Eventually I jumped ship as well, and it was a good choice!

My first character ended up being an Undead Mage. I somehow didn’t know about spells, so I just went around whacking everything with my staff, dying over and over again. It wasn’t until I made a Dwarf Paladin(an actual melee class) that I found success.

What are some of your fondest memories of World of Warcraft?

Hitting my old guild officer with a snowball while he was making a leap across a big gap. They used to have a knockdown effect, so I caught him mid-air and sent him plummeting down to his doom. He’s still mad about it today and maintains I owe him some gold for his repair bill.

A runner up was the time I got on a boat to take me to a major city. It was only after an hour or so of waiting that I realized it was one of those stationary boats that were just part of the scenery!

Alright, a personal question from me… Why are most (US) content creators always playing Alliance? I mean, you, Asmongold, Esfand, Stay Safe, Towelie all play Alliance. Hell! even Tips Out is switching to Alliance I heard, Come ON!

It’s all part of a conspiracy to push the narrative of the superior Alliance, but don’t tell anyone.

“Does the Pope shit in the woods?”

When it comes to your videos, do you follow a certain schedule? Or do you create them whenever you the time/inspiration.

I’m pretty unorganized when it comes to my videos. I don’t do Youtube as a job, so I just try to work on them whenever I have the free time. Typically I’ll try to do one “thing” a day(maybe a script, a voice over, or a small chunk of editing). Basically, I work on them whenever I can without sacrificing too much of my personal life!

Next month will see the release of the next expansion, Battle for Azeroth. Anything special planned for your channel when it comes to videos?

I’d like to put more focus on guides for this expansion. For Legion, I focused more on entertainment focused videos (such as that History of WoW) – I’d like to get back to my roots and make more guides to help people in their journey through BfA.

What are you looking forward to the most in Bfa?

Island expeditions! I want to make a return to PvP this expansion, and island expeditions seem like a fun & chaotic way to jump back into it. I’m also looking forward to mythic+ since I enjoyed them so much in Legion. Nothing like a quick dungeon run with 4 friends =).

There seems to be a lack of “hype” for Bfa compared to other expansions and Classic. What are your views on this?

I think it might be overshadowed by Legion itself. In Legion we got mythic+, world quests, artifacts, order halls, a new class, etc.. There were so many new features that BfA looks a little sparse in comparison.

I think the story could also play a part. Going from a plot that involved saving the planet from the leader of the burning legion to a faction war is a step down in many people’s eyes I think. However, I think it’s just the start and that at the end of the expansion we’ll have a threat even greater than the Legion. Don’t be too quick to dismiss the story!

Let’s talk Classic! First of all, are you going to play it?

Does the Pope shit in the woods?

Any idea on what you will be playing and how you are going to play it?

A bit of everything most likely. I’m still undecided on raiding since it’s such a big time investment. If I do raid, my goal is to play a warrior, and obtain the armor that I use as a transmog on live servers.

One of my favorite channels back in the day was Hobbes the paladin and his powerleveling runs through the old instances. I think I’d like to make a Paladin as well and help people level.

A recent post told us that Classic will run on patch 1.12 but no news regarding the available content, “changes” or addon support. How would you like to see Classic?

I’m not an authority on the game by any means, but I’d like it to be pure 1.12 with no changes for the most part. I think most people who want Classic want it with no compromise, so getting as close to as it was on live servers would be ideal.

The only exception for me personally would be a raid release schedule that emulated the game back from 2004-2007. If they make every raid available from the start, I think people would “finish” too quickly(using the term loosely because you can’t really finish an MMO of course). So I would like to see Onyxia and the Molten Core at release, then a few months later the Blackwing Lair, etc.

In addition to this, I’m not a fan of the rank 14 system and wouldn’t mind seeing some sort of change with that. I have no idea how they would change it, but it had many flaws and encouraged account sharing too much in my opinion.

But other than that, no changes!

Will Classic be influencing your content?

Definitely! I’m afraid it may influence it too much, in fact. There is so much I’d like to cover – it’ll be hard to rip myself away from it to keep a good balance between current and classic.

Let’s take a step back again, you have been around for a couple of years now on Youtube and currently have 139k subscribers and still rising. Did you ever expect to get this far?

Never! Once I hit 1000 subscribers I thought that was the peak for me. I’m very lucky and grateful for all of the support I’ve received over the years. I try not to focus on the numbers though – I make videos the same way I’ve always made them, whether it’s for 100 people, 1000, or 100,000.

Creating this kind of content takes time. How does your channel affect your daily life and what do you do to “make it work” ?

There are positives and negatives – the positives vastly outweigh the negatives thankfully. It takes a tricky balance of trying hard enough to make a good product, and at the same time making sure that it doesn’t take over your life. I had trouble with this in 2017. In 2018 now, whenever I leave the computer I leave my channel with it. I think many Youtubers struggle with this. It leaks into their personal lives and they become burned out because of it. So because of this strategy, it doesn’t really affect my daily life too much aside from taking up some of my free time.

We always like to end our interviews with some tips for our readers. Are there any tips and pointers you want to give to starting content creators out there?

First, it’s basically what I said about keeping it separate from your personal life and not letting it take over.

Secondly, passion is at the root of everything. If you’re passionate at what you do and you have the fire to improve and continue, the rest will come. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you can’t do something. With my voice, many people have said that narration is the worst possible fit for me. If I had listened to them, I wouldn’t be typing this to you today.

Try to be as unique as you can be, while still being yourself. As long as you have that passion and determination fueling you, you can accomplish anything in my opinion.