Three Year Anniversary - News Update

Greetings everyone, I know its been a criminally long time since I last updated our Patreon page here with news, and as such there's quite a bit to cover here. I do apologize for my prolonged absence, and I'll be trying to return to a weekly news format on what's going on with the channel. We're actually making a number of changes to how we handle the schedule, and there's a few projects in the works that should make video streamlining easier in the future. Since we have an absolute ton of stuff here, I've included a topic index at the top of our news post so you can more easily navigate and find out what's going on.

I - Our 3rd Anniversary and the Channel Schedule Going Forward

II - The Mod Testing Database

III - Morrowind Modding Madness - Season 2: Electric Boogaloo

IV - Upcoming Videos, Interviews, and Podcasts

V - The Patreon Pilot Program

VI - July Channel Review

VII - Community Shoutouts

I - Our 3rd Anniversary and the Channel Schedule Going Forward

Today, or rather last week, was the 3rd anniversary of Morrowind Modding Showcases. Over the last three years we've showcased some 800+ mods for Morrowind, as well as 120+ mods for Oblivion and 3 mods for Skyrim, not to mention conducting some 29 modder interviews, two podcasts (one of which is airing next week), and we've released quite a few trailers, tutorials and other videos for the Morrowind Modding Community.  To say the channel has lasted longer than I ever expected it would is a bit of an understatement, I certainly never anticipated that we'd still be covering mods in 2017 when this all started, and I'm extremely humbled by the support the community's given me. It has been my honor to serve in this role so far, and I hope to continue providing mod coverage for years to come

But having said that, there are a few changes to the schedule that we need to go over, and hopefully this will lead to a more productive channel going forward.

On the whole, we've managed to maintain about an average of three videos per week so far this year, but no doubt you've seen a bit of a slowdown with certain video series going absent for a long period of time. Essentially, we're changing the way we handle video production a bit, because videos take a long time to produce, we can't realistically maintain a shotgun approach to video releases. In order to maintain a proper regular schedule, we're going to need to develop a queue of finished videos, and as such a number of our video series, like Oblivion Modding Showcases, Let's Mod Morrowind, and Morrowind Modding Manors are going on hiatus until after we've built up a queue of finished episodes.

At this point it's hard to say exactly when these series will make a return, but my goal is to finish 10 episodes of OMS, 5 episodes of Let's Mod Morrowind and 5 episodes of Morrowind Modding Manors before adding them back into our regularly scheduled lineup. This will most likely take a few months, since at the same time, Morrowind Modding Showcases, Oblivion House Mod Hunters, Cities of Cyrodiil, and the Morrowind Mod of the Month will continue to air on a regular basis.

This is really probably something we should've done before, instead of just announcing a new series, airing an episode and then keeping an inconsistent schedule afterwards. But in any event, it will take some time before we can get everything back on to a proper schedule, and I do apologize for the delay. Going forward I'll try and be a bit better about this.

II. The Mod Testing Database

As many of you are doubtless aware, all of the mods showcased in our core-series of Morrowind Modding Showcases are tracked by Abot's superb Mod List database, providing fairly detailed notes on each mod showcased on the channel with download links and direct timestamp links to each video showcase. It's a great resource for keeping track of mods that we've already showcased, assuming of course they're in the core-series and not a mini-showcase or an episode of Morrowind Modding Manors. But what about all of those other Morrowind mods out there that haven't been showcased yet? As you've probably guessed, a lot of the work we do on Morrowind Modding Showcases involves play-testing mods and picking out ones to be showcased in the future, and a lot of the time, mods are rejected for any of half-a-dozen reasons, or they get thrown into one pile or another but it might be years before they finally get showcased.

Recently I've moved to a new strategy for testing mods, which is simply to leave no stone unturned and no mod untested. Basically a scorched earth campaign of checking every mod ever made to make sure we don't miss some hidden gem. To handle this sheer volume, keeping in mind that, after all, there's nearly 22,000 or so mods out there, I've started porting over all of my records to an online Mod Testing Database, assigning a status to each mod (Rejected, Confirmed, Maybe, To Be Fixed, etc...) along with a quality level (Poor to Excellent) and tags/themes to organize all of these entries. Currently just 400 mods have been ported over to our online Mod Testing Database, but I'm handling about 20 mods a day, so I hope to have that number close to a thousand pretty soon.

As for why I'm bringing this up, I've been contemplating releasing this mod testing database to the public as another resource for finding mods, given the long time it can take for a mod to finally get showcased, and the fact that the scorched earth campaign has already paid off with some excellent and unexpected finds that people deserve to know about. Most of these mods are from Morrowind Modding History, where there's little to no information provided on a lot of them, so the mod testing database, with its quality level designation and showcasing status can be used to help figure out whether a mod's worth playing or not.

That said, I do have some concerns about unveiling such a tool to the public. Some of the modders already listed in the database are still active today, and might take offense at the quality level designation some of their mods receive (keeping in mind that the original purpose for such designations was purely for my own benefit and organization). Plus eventually newer mods are going to be covered by the database, since the database is, after all, a tool for determining the mod layouts for future videos, and I'm worried that this might discourage modders who, again, might get a lower quality rating on their mods.

So yes, there's some pros here, but also cons, and as such I was hoping to get a little help on deciding whether or not to release the database. I've included a link to the database page in question, along with the password for accessing it, as well as a poll on whether you think the database should be made public. Please feel free to explore the database, using common search terms like "Balmora", "Ascadian Isles", "Excellent" or so on and so forth to get a hang of how mods are being listed. And don't forget to cast a vote in the poll to decide whether or not the database goes public!

Database Link 

Password: tester001

Link to Poll 

I'm contemplating doing a similar database for Oblivion mods, just to help me keep track of everything and to get showcases finished faster, but we'll see what happens. In the meantime, if you have any suggestions for improving the database, please let me know! I've set up a feedback forum on the website here for any advice or suggestions you might have! 

III - Morrowind Modding Madness - Season 2: Electric Boogaloo

After the immense success of the last Morrowind Modding Madness competition, and of course the amazing results of this year's Morrowind May Modathon Month, I'm pleased to announce we're doing a second round of Morrowind Modding Madness this year, though obviously with a lot of changes to how the competition works.

First and foremost, Morrowind Modding Madness 2017 will be a two-month long event, starting September 1st and running through to October 31st, where teams will have an entire two weeks to finish a mod instead of just one week like last time. Otherwise the format is similar to last time, a theme will be chosen at random every two weeks, and teams must then scramble to build a mod that matches that theme in the allotted time. This time around, the themes are going to be more general instead of just mod categories. For example, one week might be "Daedric" themed, so any mod that fits a Daedric theme will be accepted. Or another week might be "Dwemer" themed, or "Mage" themed or "Sea" themed or so on and so forth. This allows the modding teams a greater degree of flexibility to really stretch out their creative muscles, where they can make quests, dungeons, houses, companions, or anything else that might fit the theme.

Just like last time, we'll be giving modders a one-month head's up, roughly speaking, to form teams and register for the competition. Official registration platforms and more competition details will be announced next week, so stay tuned for that!

IV - Upcoming Videos, Podcasts and Interviews

Alright, so we have a fair bit to cover here. Even with a number of video series going on hiatus, there's a lot of videos in production for the coming weeks, including multiple modder interviews, a Tamriel Rebuilt podcast, and several showcase videos. Down below you'll find a rough outline of videos currently in production with estimated release dates:

Morrowind Mini-Mod Showcases - Jakey Keep

Short Summary: Much like "Pocket Pals!", Jakey Keep is one of those mods that we've never been able to showcase because, for whatever reason, the author decided to upload their mod in 10 different parts with 10 different download links instead of as a single complete package. We can't fit that many extra download links in a normal episode of MMS, so hence why this got shifted to a mini-showcase instead. Otherwise it's your fairly typical customize-able house mod of overall fairly good quality and construction.

Current Status: In Video Recording

Release Date: August 7th

Oblivion Mod of the Month - June 2017

Short Summary: Since OMS is in hiatus, we need to fill the gap in Oblivion mod coverage, and this is the best short-term solution I can think of. Unlike a full episode of OMS which takes some 30-odd hours to produce, a small Mod of the Month video like this only takes about 8 production hours to make and only airs once a month, making it fairly easy to fit into the schedule while we work on the larger OMS series.

Current Status: In Video Recording

Release Date: August 9th

Qestos Alpha Preview/Lyithdonea Alpha Preview Showcase

Short Summary: Ideally we'll have the Qestos Alpha Preview showcase airing next week, though the author has requested a delay until the first couple of quests have been added in, so potentially we may have to bump it to a different time-slot. In that case, we'll go ahead with the Lyithdonea Alpha Preview, which just saw a new release with the first part of the main quest added in. Both mods are fairly large, though quite different, Qestos is a city and dungeon mod, while Lyithdonea is of course a massive landmass mod.

Current Status: In Video Recording

Release Date: August 11th

Morrowind Modding Showcases - Episode 64 - Solstheim Mods

Short Summary: It's time for our yearly Solstheim episode of Morrowind Modding Showcases, where we take a look at 13 mods related to that wintery isle of the north. This episode has been delayed a bit to try and get more work done on the Mod Testing Database, and with any luck we'll hopefully find some hidden gems to include in this episode.

Status: In Video Recording

Release Date: August 12th

Tamriel Rebuilt's 16th Anniversary Podcast

Short Summary: This is a podcast/group interview conducted with lead TR developers Rats, Gnomey, Atrayonis and Kevaar. This 2-hour long podcast discusses a wide range of topics, from lore to recruitment and TR's status in the modding community and the project going forward. Originally recorded in late May.

Status: In Audio Editing and Video Recording

Release Date: August 13th

Morrowind Modding Interviews - Darkelfguy hosted by Melchior Dahrk (Three Year Anniversary Special)

Short Summary: This is that interview with yours truly that I promised over a year ago, but then dragged my feet about for ages, partially out of terror of being on the other side of the interview table. Well, we finally got it done with and the interview is recorded, including about 1 hour and 45 minutes of me babbling about nonsense.

Status: In Audio Editing and Video Recording

Release Date: August 20th

With regards to other interviews, I'm still waiting to hear back from LondonRook about the status of the interview we did last year. Hopefully we can have that interview released sometime in the next month. We're also set to have an interview recorded with David C of the TES3MP project later in August, and we're currently gathering questions for an interview with Ashstaar, famed modder behind last year's surprise hit "The Doors of Oblivion". With any luck we'll have both of those interviews recorded and released in the next month or so.

We do have plans for another podcast coming up soon, but we've had some difficulty with getting everyone on the same page scheduling-wise, so we'll see what happens. Fliggerty did express interest in participating in a podcast, but he's since gone MIA again. Unfortunately that does happen a lot with getting modders for podcasts.

Other news to note here is that Oblivion House Mod Hunters will be going on a every-other week schedule. Basically that means two episodes a month, instead of four, and we're doing this to spread out the Oblivion videos a bit. So weeks that have an episode of Cities of Cyrodiil or Oblivion Mod of the Month videos won't have an episode of Oblivion House Mod Hunters, instead the two former series will replace OHMH in that time-slot.

V - The Patreon Pilot Program

Now I need to talk a bit about the Patreon Pilot Program, because as you might imagine, with a number of core series going on hiatus, and the last update on pilot episodes being sometime last year, you might well wonder if the program is still active at all. Well, the truth of the matter is that we have hit a bit of a snag here. Originally I was planning to include some Skyrim videos in the lineup for pilot episodes, but there's been some recent drama in the Skyrim modding community regarding YouTube videos in particular, with a number of modders apparently expressing distaste for video showcases. As such, I'm really not sure that's an environment I want to deal with, I mean the Skyrim scene is already filled to the brink with mod videos, and if it means dealing with a hostile and drama-laden environment, I'd rather just not deal with it at all.

So that leaves us with a bit of a gap in terms of coming up with new pilot series to test out, there's only so many different Morrowind and Oblivion video ideas we can come up with, and we're already behind on keeping some of them updated. I was briefly considering moving over into Fallout New Vegas mods, since I played a bit of New Vegas recently and out of all the Fallout games, it perhaps reminds me the most of Morrowind. But again, we're already behind schedule with the video series we do have, and I think it's more important at the moment to build up a queue of videos so we can get every series back on schedule before we start adding more with additional pilot episodes.

That means that, yes, for now the pilot program is also on hiatus. I do apologize for this, and I fully understand if some of you choose to pull your support for the channel as a result. I honestly wouldn't blame you, I haven't exactly been the most forth-coming about the status of the channel on here.

But with any luck, going forward, we'll probably be able to restart the pilot program in November or December, and this time we'll have more than just the pilot episode finished so if a series does get the green-light, we'll have enough content to last for a while.

VI - July Channel Review

Moving on to our monthly review, July was a pretty normal month for the channel overall, with about 13 new videos airing in total. Most of these were longer Morrowind showcase videos, including an alpha preview of Empire, a detailed look at Province: Cyrodiil's island of Stirk, three episodes of Morrowind Modding Showcases, and a massive tour of Darknut's World Textures. We also had a number of mini-mod showcases taking a look at several multi-home house mods for Morrowind, and three episodes of Oblivion House Mod Hunters.

Overall, July was a pretty typical month in terms of video-production, falling just short of my personal goal of 16 videos a month. Hopefully August will be a better month in that regard, but I'm satisfied with the content we produced in July, and ideally I hope everyone else is as well.

VII - Community Shoutouts

This is sort of a new segment I want to include in our news posts going forward, because we have a pretty big and fairly active community, and there's a few people, YouTube channels, and community discussion boards I'd like to give shoutouts to and recommend you check out.

First and foremost is the new modding sub-reddit called r/tes3mods, hosted by MorrowindNostalgia. This is a new community discussion board on Reddit dedicated to talking about Morrowind mods, and so far its been pretty active, including a really great style sheet that's a bit more up to date than the old Morrowind sub-reddit. I'd encourage you to join up on there and check it out for yourself.

Second, I'd like to give a shoutout to a fellow YouTuber and Let's Player, Helswake. You may recall that we've showcased some of his gameplay mods in the past, he's made one of the Chargen overhaul mods, as well as the Skill-Based Magicka Bonus that we showcased a few weeks ago. Turns out he has a pretty longstanding Morrowind Let's Play on his YouTube channel, as well as a Daggerfall Let's Play which you don't see very often. If you've got the time, do please consider giving his channel a try.

Last of all, if you haven't heard yet, LondonRook has started his own YouTube channel and he's been uploading a lot of his Outlander videos on there, so if you don't like Twitch or just need to catch up on some of the archived episodes, that's a great way to catch up. He's also started his own Morrowind Let's Play as well, so if you'd like to hear more of that soothing voice of his, you should really stop by his channel!

Anyway, that about wraps up all the news I have for you guys today. Again, I apologize for my extremely long silence, and for those of you who've stuck with me so far, I really can't thank you enough for your support. We'll be back with another news update and roundup of channel activities next week around Saturday, so until then, thanks for reading and I'll see you all next time!