A: Hi I’m Boottspurr! I’ve been making YouTube videos for fun for a little over 3 years now. You can find me over on my YT channel “WorldofEnders”. I’m also on twitter @worldofenders, and very VERY rarely streaming at twitch.tv/boottspurr (some people follow me there just for those elusive opportunities to see me racking my brain for things to say to myself). Also, MightyTeapot lets me bring my stupid ideas into his Tea Time stream every Sunday.
Q: Did you hear of/play GW1 and what was your experiences/ your impressions? What is your earliest memory if so?
A: Yes I did play GW1! It was the first MMO I really got into. I loved it, and as a student at the time it was great that it didn't have a sub. I bought Prophecies when it came out, and all the expansions as they were released. My first character was a Necromancer named “Doctor Tardis” because the rebooted Doctor Who series had just started at the time and I was a bit of a fan. I regret that name now. I REALLY tried to make my main character (a Me/W) work before Illusionary Weaponry was good. It didn't work. I enjoyed the random arenas, really liked Factions on the whole, and loved making builds. The one thing I didn't like about GW1 was that you couldn't jump. So I guess that’s what sold me on GW2.
Q: Did you/are you playing other MMO's? What attracted you to them?
A: I played WoW for a good amount of time. I was attracted to it because you could jump. I tried SWTOR for a little while but got bored. I also bought FFXIV right when it came out. It was such an awful experience that they couldn't convince me to try it again with A Realm Reborn. I guess I’m attracted to MMOs in general because there’s always so much to do in them. Also, the ability to talk, interact, and compete with essentially the whole world is pretty great.
Q: When did you start playing GW2 and what got you involved in the game itself?
A: In the Beta. I was on board the hype train for GW2 all the way. My friend (Sleylock) and I were both huge Guild Wars fans and had been following the development of GW2 since it was announced. I mean, Guild Wars with jumping? Who could resist?
Q: What have you enjoyed about GW2 and what has kept you playing?
A: On the whole, I’ve enjoyed pretty much every aspect of GW2 (except for maybe the ending of the personal story). PvP is fun, WvW is epic, PvE is pretty ok :P but the story has been engaging overall. What’s kept me playing is probably trying to perfect each of my characters (on of ever profession), by giving them a build and playstyle that I enjoy for each one. The living world has helped keep my interest going. Also the peaks and valleys of hype over the last 3 years kept my attention…Honestly, having such an engaged community be part of, and having my YT channel as an outlet for creating things using the game – for people who seem to enjoy the stuff I make – has also kept me in it.
Q: What has been your favourite memory of GW2?
A: I have a lot of favourites. Playing for the first time and discovering the world in the Beta with Sleylock was amazing. Introducing the game to a bunch of friends and watching them enjoy it (almost) as much as I do is fantastic. Seeing my girlfriend get so much joy from her Mini Hippo Calf is heartwarming. And staying up so very late talking about Elementalist builds in the earlier GW2 days with WP was both fun and ridiculous.
Q: What class do you main/ What is your least liked class and why?
A: I have 2 mains; My Warrior and my Elementalist. (I think they have equal time played) Least liked class is probably Guardian, because they feel so slow and clunky to me.
Q: What is your preferred game mode/Have you been drawn to any other modes?
A: I really don’t have a preferred game mode. I play PvE just as much as I do PvP and WvW. I’m not deeply embedded in any of them, but I play them all quite a bit. I haven’t really too many dungeons in a while, though.
Q: What is your opinion on the lore of the game?
A: DEEP. 3 Deep 5 me. The lore is something I don’t make too many videos about (except in my Let’s RP series, where we take some liberties with the lore in the game), but in private and in guild TS I speculate WILDLY about what I think is going on in the game/lore. I’ve actually come up with some really good ideas for the origins of the Sylvari that were ruthlessly dashed when they revealed [SPOILER] that they’re Mordremoth spawn. I had SUCH good ideas D: Anyways… Lore = good.
I wouldn’t mind if they brought back some lore goodies from GW1 more overtly in GW2, however.
Q: How do you feel about the upcoming expansion HoT?
A: I’m definitely looking forward to it. I’m a bit apprehensive of a few things though:
- How much content we’re going to get up front vs. how much is going to be doled out in living story instalments afterwards
- The customizability of the Revenant
- What “Challenging PvE Content” means (more excited and hopeful than apprehensive)
- Whether the total content of the paid expansion is significantly more than what they could have given if they simply continued updates every 2 week
Q: Is there a place, theme or person you would want new content to include?
A:
- Mordremoth is #1. I want to really SEE him. Like a lot. Almost all the time. No more shadowy menace, you know? We had that with Zhaitan and look how that turned out.
- It would be good to see what’s going on down in Bloodstone Fen.
- Also, the Mursaat.
- Also a T-Rex as a meta event.
Q: What do you speculate as the next possible race?
A: It’s gotta be Tengu. It’s GOTTA be. I mean, they have a friggin’ city in the middle of the current map.
Q: How did you get started with the community, what inspired you to get involved?
A: Leading up to GW2, pretty much ALL of the information and speculation we were getting was coming from YouTubers (Woodenpotatoes, YogsCast at the time, etc.). I watched a LOT of yt back then, and got a little inspired by these guys. At some point it just seemed like something I could do, and a fun thing to do with friends; record ourselves playing video games and putting it on the internet
You don’t have to make YouTube videos to be part of the community though. I mean, I probably spend 10x more time looking at the GW2 subreddit, talking in game and on twitter about the game than I do making videos. I just like the game so much, the videos are kind of a by-product.
Q: Why do you think GW2 has such a great community around it?
A: Because I’m part of it. :3 But really, it’s hard to say. Possibly because there’s no sub fee? Because we get so much from ANet for free, that you don’t have a significant portion of the player base saying “I pay for this service every month, I demand so and so…”
Another reason is because Guild Wars 2 as a game is very inclusive. It caters to the hardcore players (probably a little less than they’d like) as well as the …softcore? …players. And most importantly, everyone seems to know this. It’s hard to get too mad at people for being “baddies” when there are so many people who play this game for very uncompetitive reasons. The very competitive player base has learned to how to organize themselves so that they don’t have to interact with the casual players too often, and that way there aren’t too many bad confrontations. I mean, I haven’t experienced many that is.
Because the game is so inclusive, it seems to draw a lot of very talented people from areas other than just gaming. People who are also very passionate for the game and can express it in amazing ways (like artwork, videos, articles, etc.)
Q: Could Arenanet do more to curate and develop its community?
A: I mean, yes. Definitely the PvP and WvW community. I think they've mostly let the PvP scene develop externally. They more to could do support PvP for sure; more gamemodes, more balance patches, more official tournaments, etc.
WvW is a tough one. There can't be an external scene for WvW so they had a few "Season" tournaments which were met with mixed reviews. The way servers are set up and how transfers work plays a big role in how difficult it is to properly support that game mode and community, though. Better rewards all around maybe?
Outside-the-game community can also be supported a bit more too. I was in a conversation a little while back with some GW2 fan site people who were hoping to get a little more support than they currently do. They deserve it too. The problem is it's just not particularly efficient for ANet to put too much effort there for publicity, because they already have that audience. They try to mainly support things that could reach a wide audience of people who are not necessarily already playing Guild Wars 2. It's not necessarily a good thing, but it makes sense for them.
Q: What changes (if at all) have you seen in the community since you started playing GW2?
A: It changes over time. There have been peaks and valleys of hype and boredom over the last three years. The highest hype point was of course the announcement of HoT, the lowest was probably ~5 months earlier in the summer.
People have been hanging on every word ANet has been telling us, and they've never been very verbose. The biggest change I'd say I've seen in the community is we seem to have learned to accept their communication policy. That doesn't mean we LIKE it :P
Q: Why did you choose your particular format [Youtube/Twitch/Blogs ect]?
A: I chose YouTube because it's the thing that gives me the most options to do what I want. It serves as a creative outlet for me. Something I do for fun. I can basically play games with my friends (and unlike Twitch not worry about being boring sometimes because of EDITING), think of interesting things to do with them, and create entertaining content that for some reason people actually watch. It's weird and great.
Q: How much does the audience and community influence your production/creations?
A: Pretty much not at all. Like I said, I make my videos for fun. For example, I have like 37 pretty long videos of "Let's RP Guild Wars 2" that basically no one watches. I make them because I have fun making them with Sleylock, and they're going to continue when new story comes out! I mean, I wasn't even monetizing my Guild Wars 2 videos until very recently.
Also, my most viewed video series is Minecraft with my Girlfriend (a stupid amount of views on some of those). But we put that series on ice a while ago because Leils and I got a little tired of the game. We're starting it again soon because we miss playing now, but when we weren't having fun, we didn't force ourselves.
Q: Do you have any advice for people wanting to follow in your footsteps?
A: Keep doing it if you ENJOY doing it. And do what you enjoy doing; it will show through in your work if you are passionate about it. Never get discouraged about view counts, because it's really really tough to start out a channel. Also, get a good mic. That's important.
Q: Do you play anything else which you make content for?
A: Yup, Minecraft is the big other one. I'm doing a Telltale Games Game of Thrones series... I was doing a Portal 2 series, and some other stuff in the past. Nothing is off the table ;)
Q: What type of games do you play for your own enjoyment?
A: Guild Wars 2 is #1 right now, I play it for my own enjoyment for most of my game time. Besides that... I love Rockband when my friends agree to playing. I used to play Halo 2 a ton in university. I like RPGs with good stories and good gameplay; Skyrim, Witcher, Final Fantasy, the old Isometric Forgotten realms games. Lots of stuff!
The only thing I'm not that interested in is turn-based strategy.
Q: Apart from the immediate cast group, who else would you recommend
A: There's so many!:
- The big 4 are mainstays: WoodenPotatoes, MattVisual, BogOtter and AuroraPeachy.
- I watch Shinryuku_ku on twitch so I can stream snipe him and attack him in WvW. There's also Donnaberry, Reyana_ATac and JebroUnity on Twitch.
- Dragon Season, Tough Love Critic, Ten Ton Hammer, and GuildMag for Op Eds.
- Dulfy for news and info.
- On Youtube there's DeanyKong (random fun), MagicalMike2 (Critical when it counts), RPGShack (For informative stuff), Wolfineer (for Engineer stuff), and That_Shaman (illegal goods).
- And finally the Black Lion Theatre Company (blackliontheatre) which is a big collab channel I helped with. We've only made 1 video so far, but it will be making more soon I think
I do enjoy a good YogsCast video. I've also been gobbling up every WatchMojo.com top10 list out there as a brainless passtime.
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