by JR Cook - 10 years ago     show comments

Diablo 3 is played by a huge variety of people around the world. Some might play it once a week, some might play it several hours a day, and others might even make part of their living playing the game. You can found a great sample of size at Twitch.TV, where you can find several people streaming this game we love everyday. On Twitch you can find Diablo pros, funny personalities, and even people who are just learning the game. Streamer Spotlight is here to share the stories of some those interesting players.

For our first edition of Streamer Spotlight we don’t just have one streamer, we found an entire Clan. The aptly named Vizjerei Clan is a very strong and active Wizard Community. If you don’t know what the Vizjerei Clan is, let our lore expert Neinball tell you a bit more about them.

No other group has had as a profound of an impact on our world as the Vizjerei have. The Vizjerei clan is one of the oldest and most powerful of the Mage Clans in Sanctuary. The Vizjerai started off as a smaller clan of seers that looked to commune with the spirits of the dead. It was one of their ancient summoners who first discovered that our world was not alone in Creation, that there were other worlds, other beings that existed in the great beyond. Unfortunately for us these beings they discovered were demons and it was this act that took the mortal realm down the path that lead us into the forefront of the Eternal Conflict.

The clan quickly began to revolve around the power they gained through rampant demon summoning and shortly thereafter they started the catastrophic Mage Clan Wars that came close to laying waste to our entire world. The demons the Vizjerei had been summoning for years were never under the control of the summoners, it had all been a ploy by the Prime Evils to lull humanity into a false sense of security before the demons sprung their trap and almost destroyed the majority of mages during the wars. If it wasn’t for the actions of the powerful Vizjerei summoner Horazon, humanity might have been enslaved by the forces of Hell many centuries ago.

Having learned their lesson the Vizjerei turned away from demon summoning and focused their talents on manipulating the natural elements of our world.

Since interviewing the entire clan would take forever, today we sit down with @Jaetch, the leader of the Vizjerei Clan.

What can we expect to see on the Vizjerei Clan stream?

Our clan stream is set up with the community in mind, most specifically the wizard community. Basically we’re making ourselves available for community questions, advice, opening the doors to theorycrafting and brainstorming, or really anything that comes up and deals with D3.

The point of view (streamer) will always be from a wizard. While the players in the clan have experience with all six classes, they all started with the wizard class and consider the wizard their main. Even in a group of four players, the POV will always be from a wizard. We try our best to include at least two wizards in a party of four, but we might not always follow that.

As for content, it can be anything. Sometimes we’ll be running through Nephalem Rift after Rift, just talking about the class and the game. Sometimes we’ll be running through some Bounties while sharing gameplay strategies. It’s unlikely that you’ll see us idle too long in the town. And even if we do idle, we’ll likely be talking about something interesting.

Most streams I’ve seen appear to be just a single person streaming. Where does the idea of having a clan-wide stream come from?

This idea sort of sprouted up out of nowhere. I believe it was Melkor, dolynick and Nel who brought this up to me sometime in May. I was down with the idea because I do have my personal Twitch channel that I use once in a while. I thought it would be fun if we could “share” a channel with everyone in the clan, taking turns just having fun and showing the world what we do as a clan, what we talk about, how we engage each other and the community, etc. In a way, it could be seen as a little PR campaign. We don’t bite.

A wonderful advantage for having a clan-wide stream is that we can quickly shift the POV from one player to another. For example, let’s say I’m running some wizard build, I’m talking, playing… but viewers see a really cool wizard build that another clan member, let’s say dolynick, is running and they want to know more about that. I can’t do much to explain a build I don’t play, so I can quickly stop the stream while dolynick restarts it on his end. It takes mere seconds to switch and dolynick can then explain how his build works from his POV.

Besides being a clan instead of a person, what else makes the Vizjerei clan stand out? Why should people watch you instead of the rest of the streamers?

The majority of the Vizjerei clan consists of community icons, influencers, contributors, theorycrafters and veterans of D3. The clan officers, specifically, are comprised of people who have been part of the wizard community since launch day of vanilla D3. They’re still here because they’ve demonstrated a passion for both the game and the community. We all became friends through the official forum and all of us ending up together in the same clan was a natural evolution from that point.

Our goal isn’t to stand out more than others, but we do take pride in sharing everything we know about the wizard class and the game. We don’t have scripts or anything. All the conversations that happen on stream are conversations that occur practically every day on our Mumble server. We want people who wish to learn more about the wizard class and the game to literally stay awhile and listen.

Can you tell us a bit more about yourself? You appear to be a Wizard buff, what do you think is the most underrated skill on the wizard’s arsenal?

I’m a community MVP for Blizzard (not an employee!), and contrary to popular belief, I’m not the wizard MVP. That would be PieHole, who is one of my officers in the clan. I’ve played as a wizard since the first day of D3 and I haven’t really looked back. I do have experience playing all the classes, though. I just finished most of the gearing for my demon hunter and I’m in the process of gearing my crusader. Next on the to-do list is my monk and then my barbarian.

As for underrated Wizard skills, I’ll talk about passives first because Melkor (community influencer and one of my officers) chimed in on this and I agree with his opinion. He thinks passives that modify elemental damage types in the form of crowd control are underrated because they are so often overlooked, particularly Temporal Flux.  Since an overwhelming majority of our skills are Arcane based, there are a lot of ways to cleverly take advantage of Temporal Flux, yet he seldom sees it on players’ skill bars. I know Melkor sings its praises in Hardcore mode.

It’s tough to pick an underrated active skill. Most aren’t underrated, but rather underwhelming. Iconic skills like Arcane Orb (and all its runes), Meteor, and Blizzard all see their uses, but they’re just not quite there. Hopefully we’ll see some major improvements in the near future.

If I really had to pick an underrated skill, it would be walking. Yes, walking. Everyone wants to use Teleport, but I think walking is OP.

Also, what is your favorite build to run these days?

I don’t really have a favorite build. Back in vanilla D3, I was known mostly for running a permanent Archon build. I think many people were surprised that when RoS launched, I didn’t attempt to go straight to Archon. I did enjoy messing around with Archon again when the skill was revamped in Patch 2.0.5 (Vyr’s Amazing Arcana set “fixed” and Archon became multielemental). Right now I’m working on an Arcane-based Explosive Blast build with Arcane Torrent. I talked a little bit about it in one of my recent YouTube videos.

As the Clan Master, how do you enforce your leadership?

I may be the leader, but that’s on paper. I don’t enforce anything, really. I just keep an eye out and make sure everyone’s on their best behavior. It’s not a dictatorship.

Blizzard contacted me all the way back in January 2014, before Patch 2.0, about reserving a clan name. So when the clan was set up, we quickly got to organizing. In the clan’s early days, Melkor started developing an officer voting system that seldom requires my direct decision making or enforcement. Things like voting in new members require a majority vote. We keep an odd number of officers and I simply act as a tiebreaker. The nice thing about our system is it allows for flexibility in real life schedules. Once a majority is reached, any officer can execute the decision. It’s a “round table” approach that works for us. In a situation where a majority cannot be reached, or if there’s a tie, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a text message from Melkor asking me to make a quick decision.

But for the most part, I don’t need to do too much. I do what I can, but in the end, it’s a team effort.

Also, do you have any experience with other Blizzard Games?

I love StarCraft. I used to play a lot of Brood War and played some competitive StarCraft II. It started getting too stressful for me at one point so I play casually now. I really enjoy the lore behind StarCraft so whenever a new expansion comes out, I play through the campaign and soak in the story. Blizzard better make a full CGI feature film about StarCraft one day.

I also play Hearthstone on and off. I played Magic: the Gathering for years so it didn’t take me too long to get accustomed to Hearthstone. My only other experience with the WarCraft universe was from WarCraft III. I never had the opportunity to get into World of WarCraft (speaking of which, I’m really wasting the Warlords of Draenor Alpha invite right now), so Hearthstone is currently the only way I can stay connected to the franchise.

Have you had any “guild-drama” type of problems within the Vizjerei clan? What do you feel are the main differences between Diablo 3 clans and WoW guilds?

It could be my imagination, but sometimes people may feel intimidated by or concerned with the combination of our members.  As mentioned before, there are some big wizard community names in our clan, for example, dolynick, PieHole, Boozor, Melkor, BDF, TekkZero, ChangBooster, and many, many, many others.

Remember, we’ve all been friends for years. We tend to agree with each other (at the same time, we can get into heated debates with each other, too) and we tend to like quantifiable explanations for things.

I think this causes people to sometimes think we have an elitist attitude or a closed-off mentality.  Nothing can be further from the truth. The funny thing is, getting into the Vizjerei clan isn’t a long, dramatic, painstaking process. Post on the official wizard forum, be constructive, hop onto our Mumble server, and get to know us.  It’s really that simple.

As for the main differences between D3 clans and WoW guilds, I can only speak from what I know. I mentioned I never really got into WoW, but there are many members in the clan who did play WoW for years. As of now, I think D3 clans are a lot more casual and very simplistic in design. That’s because currently there’s limited game content and very limited clan features. It’s a work in progress and Blizzard talked about this before. We’ll see how the clan system evolves down the line.

Can you introduce a few the people we will be seeing on stream? Share a bit about their backgrounds, their history with Blizzard gaming, their favorite class, and general stuff like that?

I can’t say too much about each and every member who may show up on stream, but I can go over the hosts who have signed on to stream.

Besides yours truly, there’s Junger, one of my officers. This guy is a real piece of work. One moment he could be enlightening you on some interesting game mechanic he figured out or he can be in the middle of discussing his build in-depth. And before you can even realize it, he could be trolling you harder than any troll can possibly be humanly capable of trolling you. I really look up to him and respect him, though. Currently he’s the de facto leader of his cult called “Junger Rules.” Rumor has it that his cultists feed him a few free Horadric Caches each day.

Co-hosting with Junger is Void, another one of my officers. This guy is also a real piece of work and it’s no surprise that he’s teamed up with Junger on the same day of the week. He is equally likely to blow your mind away with some interesting build or skill combination. And he is also equally likely to troll you to no end. But jokes aside, he’s one knowledgeable guy. You probably won’t see him on camera, but know for a fact that as he’s talking, there’s a great chance he’s donning a massive ear-to-ear smile.

The other host is Nel. She hails from a faraway land called Azeroth, having set up a permanent residence in Sanctuary a few months ago. By far one of the most passionate and fiery members in the clan, you can find her spending most of her time trying to roll a fire-based Tal Rasha’s Allegiance or searching for the elusive Wand of Woh. Maybe she’ll find it on stream one day, so keep an eye out for her.

There are a few other members who haven’t “reserved” a time to stream, but often participate during stream sessions.

One of the big names is dolynick, another one of my officers and one of the wizard community’s great theorycrafters (alongside fellow theorycrafters Loroese and TekkZero, both clan members). If there’s anything game mechanics related or math related, we all turn to dolynick (he made on helluva spreadsheet for your math needs). You can also count on dolynick to not run any of the popular “end-game” builds we see today. It’s incredibly unlikely you’ll see dolynick run an Archon build or a Mirrorball build. If he’s playing a witch doctor, it’s highly unlikely that he’ll be running a Jade spec or a Fetish-based build. LeapQuake barbarian? Forget it. If you want to see strange builds that you wouldn’t even imagine to be remotely effective for end-game, check out dolynick.

Another big name that many people in the wizard community can recognize is Melkor. He’s an officer in the clan, but I consider the guy my right-hand man. We went to BlizzCon 2013 together, we talked to the developers and community team together. We live like 20 miles apart and actually share a few mutual real-life friends. And the best part is, we didn’t know about the existence of each other prior to D3. Melkor played WoW for about 15 minutes before he said, “Yeah, no,” and that was about six years ago.  He joined D3 because he had a love for D2, but never really got into it as intensely as D3.  Melkor loves to write, and he makes rap music about the wizard forum. Some of his “career highlights” include being invited to BlizzCon, participating in RoS’s Beta, maintaining a very popular guide in the wizard forum, and participatingin a playtest session with developer Don Vu. I can promise you that when Melkor streams, it’s going to be interesting.  Now I just have to tell him not to rap the whole time.

Time and again, it’s likely that you’ll also see names like pensfan080, Ceforium, Kanjihack, amongst many others. Pensfan080 is one of my officers. You’ll probably never see him stream from his POV because he tends to go on extended AFK sessions with his phone. He’s a lover of pugs, hockey, and an aspiring multiboxer. And speaking of multiboxers, Ceforium is our resident multiboxer. He started off multiboxing four wizards, but currently is in the process of attempting to get four crusaders up to Torment VI farm. And then there’s Kanjihack, the guy that’s responsible for maintaining a long, long thread in the wizard forum regarding legendary proc effects. He’s also the guy that was blessed with a gift Wand of Woh from Melkor, decided that he hated the play style, and now keeps the wand in a lonely corner in his stash, collecting dust.

This is a really, really long response, but I’ll stop here as I can keep going with each and every member of the clan. One thing is certain. Everyone in the Vizjerei clan started with the Wizard and holds the Wizard class very dear to their hearts. It’s one of the main reasons why we started up this clan streaming project.

You’ve mentioned that your stream is still “in construction,” when can we expect it to go live?

I can consider it “live” by now, although there are still some details to sort out, such as getting all the potential streamers on the same page, making sure everyone has all the necessary tools on their end. We also need a profile picture. I haven’t had the time to design one yet.

Is your schedule finalized? If not, can we have a tentative schedule?

The schedule is still tentative. This clan channel is a collective effort that we agreed on. By no means will anyone be “required” to do anything. We don’t want to make it a job. We’re playing a game, after all, and if anyone starts losing sight of the fun aspect, then what’s the point?

Fortunately, those who have signed on to stream are very passionate players, so I don’t see any major issues in the near future. We also plan on adding a couple of hosts or more per day so at least one of them can stream. For example, right now the tentative schedule for Wednesdays includes Junger and Void as the hosts. So the plan is to have at least one of them show up to host the stream. Maybe both of them will be on.

Currently the schedule looks something like:

MONDAY
Time: TBA
Host(s): TBA

TUESDAY – Gameplay
Time: 9 p.m. – 11 p.m. EDT
Host(s): Nel, Melkor

WEDNESDAY – Gameplay
Time: 9 p.m. – 11 p.m. EDT
Host(s): Junger, Void

THURSDAY – Gameplay
Time: 9 p.m. – 11 p.m. EDT
Host(s): Jaetch

FRIDAY – “Junger Rules” Bounties
Time: TBA
Host(s): Assorted

Both Mondays and Fridays are left open right now for anyone who wishes to stream but don’t want to be bound by a set schedule.

We want to thank Jaetch and the entire Vizjerei clan for participating on the first edition of Streamer Spotlight, be sure to check them out here.