Writing a musical about bears in World of Warcraft

[Bjorgan]

It is as the title says, I have been working on this tirelessly since November when my friends and I started doing all-bear raids in World of Warcraft. At the time it was a goofy thing to do and the mechanics were structured in such a way that it became doable to push through the highest endgame content using only bears with 5 million health that shot devastating giant purple laser beams that did 42% of our health in damage. We had so much fun ignoring the mechanics, goofing around and making puns that I worried at the end of the patch (when the gamebreaking mechanics were being taken away) we wouldn't be able to continue our shenanigans into the next expansion. Lamenting that the loss of this pure, whimsical, joyful idea might die off before the next patch, I decided I wanted to immortalize the bear raids by taking it to 11, Spinal Tap style.

I reached out to a friend of mine who has a master's in musical performance to help me structure and personalize my creative process - my best friend from High School - and we have had an absolute BLAST reconnecting and making each other laugh. I've gotten to the point where I have all the music picked out, all the characters are finalized and I've pulled some of the BIGGEST names in the community to join in on the project. The more people join and things fall into place, the more I feel like all of this was set in motion long ago.

I'm so grateful that I have a chance to give back to the community and reconnect with old friends, but I am a bit overwhelmed at being actor, writer, director, and singer. If anyone has tips that can help me stay grounded during this process, I am open-minded. I tend to find my greatest creative strides when I let myself get into "Bear brain", so I stop overthinking and let the characters take over.

Also I posted this hoping to make Leo spit out his blueberry smoothie.

 

 

Edited March 13, 2021 by Bjorgan

[diamondpenguin]

22 minutes ago, Bjorgan said:

It is as the title says, I have been working on this tirelessly since November when my friends and I started doing all-bear raids in World of Warcraft. At the time it was a goofy thing to do and the mechanics were structured in such a way that it became doable to push through the highest endgame content using only bears with 5 million health that shot devastating giant purple laser beams that did 42% of our health in damage. We had so much fun ignoring the mechanics, goofing around and making puns that I worried at the end of the patch (when the gamebreaking mechanics were being taken away) we wouldn't be able to continue our shenanigans into the next expansion. Lamenting that the loss of this pure, whimsical, joyful idea might die off before the next patch, I decided I wanted to immortalize the bear raids by taking it to 11, Spinal Tap style.

I reached out to a friend of mine who has a master's in musical performance to help me structure and personalize my creative process - my best friend from High School - and we have had an absolute BLAST reconnecting and making each other laugh. I've gotten to the point where I have all the music picked out, all the characters are finalized and I've pulled some of the BIGGEST names in the community to join in on the project. The more people join and things fall into place, the more I feel like all of this was set in motion long ago.

I'm so grateful that I have a chance to give back to the community and reconnect with old friends, but I am a bit overwhelmed at being actor, writer, director, and singer. If anyone has tips that can help me stay grounded during this process, I am open-minded. I tend to find my greatest creative strides when I let myself get into "Bear brain", so I stop overthinking and let the characters take over.

Also I posted this hoping to make Leo spit out his Blueberry Smoothie.

 

 

Get overly serious and passionate. This stuff is not for kids. And just practice it over and over until doing the musical is second nature. Then you will have it down. 

[Bjorgan]

Actually it's all online. Everyone records their parts from home, but I do all the organizing and writing. Gonna be episodic, gonna make the process as painless as possible for my artists!

[Yarco]

Be careful spending hundreds of hours on something that has to do with copywritten content. At any time, Blizzard can decide they don't like your bear musical associated with their brand and issue a DMCA or cease and desist.

I've had guide books I wrote for Guild Wars 2 and Pokemon struck down from Amazon due to copywrite issues. That was only a couple dozen hours each and it still really sucked. I can't imagine having a project of this scale get shut down.

If you don't think it could happen to you... look at the Blitzchung controversy. You think Blizzard will hesitate to shut the whole thing down if one person working on your project happens to make an off-color tweet?

If you're really passionate about organizing all of this and making it a reality, don't rely on a specific game franchise as a crutch. If you ever do get wildly successful, you'll never be able to get your musical on Broadway or anything like that without giving Blizzard a 30% cut just for using their IP. At least make it a musical about MMOs in general.

Just my 2c. Even if you've already put a bunch of work into this, it's still easier to pivot now instead of wait until the whole thing is done and then run into problems.

Edited March 15, 2021 by Yarco