So I’ve been streaming every weekend on Twitch for a couple of months now, and things are going fairly well. Originally, I envisioned myself as mostly a Variety Streamer, playing a bunch of different games, and not really focusing on any one in particular.
Yeah, that lasted about a week.
As you can tell from a brief perusal of the Past Shows section of this website, I play “Lord of the Rings Online” (LOTRO) a lot. As in ‘way more than is good for me’, if you get right down to it. I also play “World of Warcraft“, “Rift“, and have been known to dabble in games like “Rebel Galaxy”, “The Secret World”, and so forth. But for the most part, I play LOTRO, and everything else is a side distraction, at best.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with that, mind you. I’ve gotten most of my audience thus far from playing LOTRO, and that’s great. Standing Stone Games has been pretty awesome about letting LOTRO players know about my Twitch channel, and other LOTRO streamers have gone out of their way to help me out. All in all, playing LOTRO as much as I have thus far has worked out quite well.
But that wasn’t the plan.
I’ve been thinking about things, and feel like I have come up with a plan that might just work for everybody. As you should well know by now, I maintain a seven-session schedule on Twitch, Saturdays to Mondays. But often I split sessions up into two, roughly 90 minute streams, out of the three hours usually allocated for each session. So while I might allocate time for seven sessions in a weekend, that can generate as many as 14 actual livestreams, while giving me more breaks to get up and stretch, walk around a bit, take a brief Bio break, etc.
So I’m thinking we might just have to crank things up a notch, add more variety to the sessions, while staying true to what has worked out so well for me, being playing LOTRO. Here’s what I have in mind:
- At least five LOTRO sessions every weekend. The first five would be my main “Scormus fails At LOTRO” series (where I play my Minstrel), anything else would be “Derping about in LOTRO”, playing some other character.
- At least three WoW sessions every weekend. These would likely all be on my new Tauren Shaman, and I’ll probably start calling these “Scormus Fails At WoW”, as opposed to the “Derping about in WoW” I had been titling them thus far.
- At least two Rift sessions every weekend. These will also be retitled to “Scormus Fails At Rift”, as if I’m going to be playing a game regularly, I’m not really derping about in them, am I?
- Any additional sessions I stream (as the minimums here only add up to 10, rather than 14) might be other games, or just extra sessions with LOTRO, WoW, or Rift. As I said above, any more than five LOTRO sessions in a weekend would be on a Warden, Runekeeper, or whatever, as opposed to my Mini. Extra sessions with Rift or WoW would just go into their usual series.
So, does that make sense?
The way I envision it going is like this: I’ll knock out my five LOTRO sessions, likely on Saturdays and perhaps into early Sunday morning. Then any additional sessions left would be used to play WoW and Rift, with WoW taking priority for the first three sessions, anyway.
Why, though? Because this allows me to get a lot of LOTRO playing in, while maintaining some variety with other games I enjoy, and keeping the replays here diverse. What? You thought this was all about Twitch? No, of course I also have to think about how my livestreaming affects this website, especially in the replays (Past Shows) generated.
By having at least five LOTRO streams a weekend, I can post at least one LOTRO replay every weekday (at 9am specifically, is the plan). Then if we hit the minimums only, I can post a WoW replay every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 5pm. And – again, if we only hit the minimums – the I can post two Rift replays, one each on Tuesday and Thursday, at 11pm.
Now then, let’s say we actually manage to split each session, and generate the maximum number of streams I can in a weekend. With 14 streams, that would allow me to put out five weekday LOTRO videos (@ 9am), five WoW videos (@ 5pm), and four Rift videos (@ 11pm)… Actually, if I had 14 sessions in my pocket, I’d dive down deep and knock out a 15th session, just so I could have a full week of Rift videos, too.
OCD is a terrible thing, by the way.
Isn’t this a bit of Overkill, though? Yeah, it really is. I drive myself to the point of exhaustion every weekend, all for your entertainment, and my obsessive need to create content. This is why I would knock out the LOTRO sessions early in the weekend, leaving me to livestream as I wish the rest of the time, because the WoW and Rift streams would just be added content. Fun to play, and certainly something I’d want to create, but not something I’d feel I had to knock out a certain amount of in a weekend.
Let’s say things didn’t go as planned one weekend. Let’s say, for one reason or another, I could only knock out the bare minimum of six livestreams, assuming that the Saturday 9pm slot was skipped for our local D&D game, and none of the others were split. This would give me just the base minimum of five LOTRO videos, plus one other, which would likely be with LOTRO as well. I’d just do a Derping session at the end of the weekend, and toss that replay up to the site as a bonus, with no WoW or Rift videos at all that week.
Would that suck? Yes. Would that drive my OCD insane? Quite likely. But would I survive? Absolutely.
In the end, as long as I knock out five LOTRO livestreams a weekend, I’m happy. Anything else I manage to get done is icing on the cake, nothing more. This is why I schedule seven sessions a weekend, to allow me the greatest opportunity to get at least five sessions done, plus some “wiggle room”, if it is needed.
Anyway, this is what I have planned right now, but as you know, plans can and do change. We’ll see how things go over the next couple of weeks, before I decide if this plan will last through the month.
