It’s currently rumored that Patch 5.4 will be released on August 28th. Today, Blizzard released their Patch 5.4 preview of the Siege of Orgrimmar, a common practice as the company gears up in preparation for their major content releases. As Patch 5.4 is going to be a huge patch involving the battle with Hellscream Garrosh, it’s also an opportunity for Twitch streamers to take advantage of Flex Raiding to grow their viewership. This blog will discuss that aspect.
Flex raiding is currently aimed at friends and family members in a stab at blending the casual raiding aspect by lowering the difficulty slightly but making it more social than LFR. Beyond friends and family members, there are many people saying that they will be using this feature for pugging on their realms since the easier difficulty should allow for more opportunities to get less skilled potential raiders to participate. But a tool like this has more opportunities for another segment: live streamers.
The problem with Flex raiding is that unlike LFR, Flex raiding still will require a certain number of people gathered together at a scheduled time. Even though the number requirement will not be as stringent as normal raiding, people who are limited by time still will be forced to rely on LFR for gearing and raiding. This is where live streamers over on Twitch have a great opportunity to increase their viewership.
While many of us await the results of Connected Realms, people nonetheless will be forced to continue dealing with issues of pugging and being restricted to their realm’s raiding schedules. For instance, in my case, I belong to an Oceanic server, despite the fact that I mostly play during PST. In the long term, that will restrict me from participating in anything beyond LFR the way the game is currently structured. Although I do have a friend on a different realm with a large guild, his obligation is directly to the people within his guild first and foremost before he can reserve space for someone outside of the guild (like myself). So once again unless my friend happens to have an open spot, I’m still left in the dark.
Yet I see people over on Twitch who have managed to establish their own communities of varying sizes. Some will easily be able to create their own pugs and use their internal resources of tanks and whatnot to form their own Flex raids. By having the easier difficulty, this hopefully will allow less overall frustration than both normal raiding and most LFR situations.
For me, it’s more than just using Flex raids to increase viewership and follows. I see this situation as a better, slightly more organized alternative to LFR that can scale along people’s schedules. With Twitch streamers playing World of Warcraft 24/7, it’s quite possible to create fluid raiding to match people of all times. Also, I prefer this idea to straight pugs even on servers because 1) you can see the raid leader (most likely the streamer); 2) you have a better connection to the people you’re playing with (the streamer’s community). Here’s some ideas of how streamers can handle Flex Raiding when it goes live:
- Make an attempt to define a set schedule and post it to your stream. Like any raids, ask ahead of time what roles you will require from your group.
- Use something like Google Docs (Spreadsheet) to help manage the Battle Tags. I would suggest creating something where you connect the twitch player’s ID with their battle tag, role and name.
- Ensure that the people follow before you add them at the very minimal. I wouldn’t ask for donations (unless you’re one of those greedy raiding types that ask for money for carries) but I would try to make sure the people you’re playing with is following after you’ve invited them via Twitch + Battle Tag. If you have other social media outlets, this is another opportunity to increase your subscriptions on those applications. Have people who subscribe to your Twitter and Facebook, etc. tweet out the activity to get the word out for your Flex Raid.
- If you have a subscribe button, this might provide a good opportunity to increase your subscription base by prioritizing subscribers over others. If you’re a high end raider, consider using your valuable skills and resources to carry subscribers as a possible incentive (just think about this: time is money to some people and there are those that will value getting carried by their heroes and just simply pay for it)
- If you have additional social media applications like Facebook or Twitter, consider using those services to create events (like Facebook events) to remind people of your Flex raid times. Also, use notifications as another method for reminding people.
- Consider setting up a voice chat system. If you require something like a Mumble server, that’s where you may ask for those raiding with you to contribute via donations (this wouldn’t be too unreasonable since you probably will be the one setting up the server). While Skype is okay, Skype is also notorious for people getting DDOS’d on stream. So investigating an alternative voice chat system is better overall. If you insist on Skype, create a separate account in case you don’t want to use your private one.
- Talk with your fellow Twitch streamers and find out what they’re doing in this regard. This is where the Twitch community of streamers can come together and really work out something for their viewers in helping to organize a consistent Flex raid schedule.
- Set goals ahead of time. If you’re going for achievements, make sure other people realize that as well. Everyone participating will have their own set of goals and you need to keep this in mind. While some people may just want to use this opportunity to play with you, others may want to do other things such as achievements or all or some bosses.
- Treat your viewers as you want to be treated. Even if you’re the one setting up the raid, never forget that the viewers are the ones keeping your stream going. Not everyone wants to get yelled at and not everyone wants to be treated like babies. Understand whom your community is and react accordingly.
- For subscribers, followers and those participating, the above rule goes for you even more so. The streamer is also taking up their valuable resources, time and money to set these things up for you. The idea for Flex Raiding at the end of the day is for Friends and Family. While most of us are not family, I would hope that as part of the streamers’ communities we can at least treat each other with respect and become friends in creating a positive and productive raiding experience.
For those who aren’t as interested in raiding but are curious and tempted, give it a try. There are numerous incentives such as BoA weapons that will scale, new achievements and mounts. Look at this situation as something mutually beneficial. We all want to participate at some level and see this succeed.