Interview: Kakio

1.) What made you want to make videos about World of Warcraft?

Oh man, just thinking back to that time reminds me of the cringy voice I had, the terrible jokes and the chunky machinima animations – not that any of that has changed significantly, but nowadays I can at least tell my parents about what I do without getting ashamed of myself.

I’ve been watching videos about World of Warcraft since Oxhorn’s Roflmao, but it wasn’t till I found Crendor’s machinimas in 2011 that I started to gain a real interest in the comedic side of WoW videos. Basically, Crendor’s often sarcastic observational and parody comedy really stuck with me, shaped my still evolving teenage-sense-of-humour, and 2 years later…
(in 2013)
I put this more developed understanding of humour to use in my first videos ever on Youtube – about World of Warcraft, anyway, I had actually been making League of Legends videos years before that, but those are even worse… I’ve made a pact with myself to hide that information in the deepest pits of my memory and keep it there, locked away forever.

So my inspiration to make videos in the first place was Crendor, who also inspired the format of the content; short, comedic machinima. My inspirations are different from my motives though, as I, in all honesty, wanted to see if I could be one of those known WoW content creators. Plus, when I grew up, I was often told that I was very unfunny, which has stuck with me ever since then. I wanted to see if I could prove not only them, but also myself wrong, as I had unfortunately been sorta convinced that they were right. Now, 4 years later, I don’t know if I’ve succeeded in doing so to myself yet, but at least I know I have to the majority of my viewers, which is truly awesome to witness.

Got a little personal, but hey, there’s an honest answer.

2.) Would you say that making videos about WoW has made playing WoW more of a chore or is it still a hobby?

That’s a very good question, because I think that has a lot to do with my biggest struggles with making videos about WoW – I’ve simply burned out. In the beginning it didn’t affect me at all, but as I grew older and school and such became a bigger part of my life, it was getting harder and harder to maintain interest in WoW in the same way that I did in Wrath and Cata – back then I would basically play all day, but now I had other obligations to worry and/or take care of.

WoW is definitely more of a chore now, especially the last year and a half since my channel started to grow and gain a lot of subscribers in comparison to before where I would just post a machinima whenever I wanted to, simply because there was no expectation of me doing anything consistently. It’s a shame, since I have lost all interest in the game, especially the lore – my current state of mind might just be due to a mix of being burned out after all these years, having other matters to attend to, trying to reach a point where I do Youtube professionally and also seeing so much other content that I’d like to do, but I feel like I’m bound to this one game – that can create some tension to the source, I guess. But that’ll be changed soon.

3.) What aspects of WoW do you enjoy most? What aspects do you enjoy least?

Most enjoyable aspects:

The Lore
– Ever since my dad read out loud the Draenei lore from the Burning Crusade manual to me I’ve loved the lore – it is the main thing that always keeps me hooked, no matter what. I especially think the recent storylines has been fantastic, even PERFECT in comparison to what they brought us in Warlords of Draenor!

The Art Style
– I don’t know exactly why I like the art style so much… is it the cartoony characters? The beautiful, vast and dynamic zones such as Mulgore, Talador and Highmountain? The beautiful, 2D bushes? Nostalgia? I don’t know, but one thing I am sure about is that it’s very unique. I think most gamers in the world could look at a screenshot from WoW and know exactly what game it is, and that’s the best thing about it in my opinion. And of course, the music is beautiful as well, I guess that can fit into this art segment? Well, it does now.

Least enjoyable aspects:

The Grind
– Man, this is what killed my interest in raiding after Legion was released. The AP grind was too much for me, as school suddenly opened the gates and bombarded me with work + I wanted to make videos – raiding simply took way too much time to maintain, as the pots, flasks and food were abnormally expensive, so I had to farm gold and grind AP to even have a chance of staying off the bench the 3 times a week we raided. My guild was in the server’s top 5 as well, which probably didn’t help. I decided to quit raiding after trying to balance it all for a couple of months, which helped me appreciate the game a lot more afterwards. The grind is actually the most notable thing I can think of, it has basically been the bane of an ultimate enjoyable WoW experience for years for me. I used to like it, but well, I’ve changed along with the circumstances since then. Actually, add Khadgar to the least enjoyable aspects as well. Every time I see that man I get PTSD flashbacks to Highmaul and his weird fascination with ogres, sending us in for hundreds of the same item just to give us a slightly upgraded ring in the end – which everybody had and that you had to have in order to raid on a decent level.

I’ve no remorse for what I did in my Broken Shore video. And the eggs did fit, btw.

4.) How many more Blood Moons will fans have to wait for, Why Forsaken? – A Collection of Flawless Reasons?

Hahah, before then I have to make the Blood Elf one, so knowing me there’s probably a few years before that one.  I’ll try to get working on that series again soon though, I’m very proud of the last one – they are just a lot of work to do, since they are generally 8+ minutes, but I might just lower that for future installments of the series.

5.) Last summer you made a video informing your viewers about Warcraft Bible’s rampant plagiarism, how did you stumble upon the plagiarism?

This is a long story, but a few months ago I wrote a brief (although in a comedic, joking way) summary on Krucial’s discord channel;

A Plagiarism Disaster of Biblical Proportions

It was a warm summer evening… I had just put down the Skittles bag as I reached for the mouse to find another video to lay my sight on. Then I heard the sound of a pop. Skype was blinking in the bottom of my screen. Doronsmovies, Hirumaredx and Hellscream (now known as Krucial) had been talking about The Warcraft Bible for a while. Several months. So had I. We didn’t like the way he made his videos, but this time, it was different. Suddenly, Hirumaredx sent a link to an article along with a Warcraft Bible video… We checked it out and were shocked to see what it brought to the light of day… The whole video was stolen, word for word. So we began checking his other videos, especially Doron searched with the ferocity only a human being from the Balkans could conjure up. We searched for hours, only to find that we were stacking videos and articles on top of each other… 5… 10… 15… This New Zealander had not spared a single minute finding scripts he could manifest into his videos. He had his donation button, clickbait tit thumbnails, mispronunciations of SARGERAS and a Patreon site… and, of course, hundreds of thousands of views and tens of thousands of subs per month. We could not let this go on any further. So I took the humble mantle of destruction, as I pieced together a script that would turn out to be the demise of the once so prominent WoW Youtuber Warcraft Bible. And as humble as I clearly am, I have to give props to the Youtubers who helped me. My friends. My allies. We reviewed the script many times, checking for every loop in logic, any mistake that could be countered. I didn’t record until we were sure it was without fatal flaws.

To perhaps be continued…

There’s a lot more to the story than that, but this is basically the only part of the summary appropriate to your question.

6.) What future projects do you have coming out soon?

I want to make some parody videos, perhaps about WoW news and also reaction videos on Youtube – in a jokingly manner, not calling out anyone. I think that would be a lot of fun to make, since I enjoy doing observational, sarcastic comedy the most. I also want to make more “Why..?” videos and continue the “gameplay skits” such as the Broken Shore video I made a few months ago – I really enjoyed making that, so I might cover Argus in the same way + perhaps do some “Why (Insert Class)?” videos with that same format in the future.

As mentioned earlier, I’ve been planning to make videos about other topics than WoW and I am now closer to actually knowing what I want to do – I’ll have to try a few things and then act on whatever is received best and what I enjoyed making the most. I just don’t want to be another one of those flopping Youtubers, so I’m being very cautious with my steps – but I will always try to bring increasingly better content with each video and keep my style and sense of humour intact. How bad can such a crash be anyway?
Heheh…

Heh..

Hm.

7.) If you could experience one WoW event in Real Life, what would it be?

Hmm…

Definitely not the balloon thing, I wouldn’t trust that talking panda with my life, no way. I’d rather watch my own videos with 15 non-WoW players any day of the week. Probably the boat race in Thousand Needles, since I can imagine that being quite the experience irl – I’ll arrive in a cheap Jack Sparrow costume from Ebay and plunder anyone who looks at me in the wrong way. Yeah, that’d be tight. Btw, if anyone answers “Winter Veil” to this question,I’ll be disappointed… Isn’t Christmas enough for you?!

8.) Why Gnomes? Have you found a reason yet?

Yeah, to get the satisfaction of making them unwillingly jump off a mountain or explore the depths of the ocean until the last bubble of air rises to the surface.

9.) What keeps you motivated to make videos?

Lately I have to be honest and say that I’ve been searching for any form of motivation other than getting feedback – the actual process of making the videos has grown stale for me the past few weeks, but when I did my roleplay series that kinda disappeared – I think I just need to evolve my content to be a bit more “work friendly” to myself, since my normal “rant” videos take at least 40 hours to create – which is a lot for one video. If I’ve just started working on a new idea, it’s hard for me to imagine the video being finished in the near future, which is very demotivating.  But yeah, the last year or so, with a few exceptions, I’ve been having issues finding motivation, which has made me ask myself if I truly have a passion for doing this… and when I searched for the answer I’ve found that the answer is ‘yes’, but I think I need to dig and evolve my content to my new interests in order to gain the right motivation. I feel like every creative person clash with themselves on this topic, so I’m not too worried. Fun times!

10.) What are some fun facts about yourself that fans may not know?

Well, I’m Danish. Which nobody knows.
Nobody.

I don’t know what would be an interesting or fun fact about me to other people, but here’s a short list of what I guess could be considered that:

1. I’m 6’2 and 21 years old.
2. I graduated from Multimedia Design school this summer.
3. I’ve been deaf in my right ear since birth, probably due to some kind of goof with the developing nerves, resulting in the ear failing to connect the brain to the translated sound waves.
4. I’ve played WoW since mid-Burning Crusade.
5. My stickman figure’s head was designed way before I made WoW content, as the first version of it was briefly the logo of the channel.

11.) Anything you want to shamelessly plug?

My Paypal. Just kidding, my Patreon. Naaaaah, just kidding YET again, gotcha – my Youtube channel and Twitter. Twitter for the dank memes.

A big thanks to Kakio for taking the time out of his day to give us some real answers to the tough questions! Next up we have another interview coming up  with Taliesin and Evital. Until next time folks, stay classy!

Like Dank memes? Follow Kakios twitter: https://twitter.com/MightBeKakio

Like quality content? Here’s his Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/TheParanoidShadows

Like supporting Content Creators? Here’s his Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/kakio