r/Asmongold Oct 17 '24

IRL Message from Tips (OTK guy)

2.2k Upvotes

Hey guys, this is Tips from OTK.

I just wanted to chime in and let you guys know who Zack is to me.

I started making content in 2017 after Classic WoW, my favorite game of all time, was announced to return at Blizzcon. Words cannot describe how elated I was in that moment. After years and years of boycott and demands by the community, led in many ways by Zack, Blizzard had finally listened.

As soon as the announcement came out, I made a commitment to myself to finally take the chance on YouTube, something I had wanted to try one day but was never brave enough to do. Guys like Totalbiscuit and Kripp were my original inspirations, but until I came across a video titled "How to CORRECTLY do Timewalking Dungeons" almost 10 years ago, I never thought I'd be able to get over that hump. The creator behind that video was Zack.

Zack was not just an inspiration to me, but within a month after I started posting videos, he came across one of them and reacted to it on stream. In that moment, he changed my life forever. Not only did I receive an influx of positivity and support from his community, I received validation from someone who, up until that point, was my hero.

You can imagine how it felt when, a month or so after that, I took a chance and tweeted at him asking if he wanted to come on a podcast with me to talk Classic, and to my shock, he agreed. Here I was, a random dude with less than 200 followers, asking one of the biggest streamers and my idol to do something that had absolutely no benefit to him whatsoever. And he said yes. After that podcast, my content career started to accelerate.

I attended my first Blizzcon in 2018, one year after Classic was announced. By that point, I was doing Classicast with Esfand and Staysafe and was excited to meet up with them and finally get to meet the Classic bros I was on the same journey with. What I did not expect to do was meet Zack, who up until then, I hardly knew beyond the few times he reacted to my content.

We were at the lobby on the way to the WoWhead event. Esfand had already started to skyrocket in viewership and was streaming his experiences ahead of us. For the most part, I was just walking alone, looking to make the most of my first Blizzcon; a small, few thousand subscriber YouTube creator with hardly a face to recognize. But among the crowd of hundreds, some random guy DID recognize me, came up behind me, and gave me a big hug.

I turned around, a little freaked out ngl, to see who it was. And it was fucking Zack dude. Fucking Zack. My idol, my hero. The guy who inspired me to get into this new world I never thought I had a place in. The guy who, despite me being NOTHING, went out of his way time and time again to help me, support me, talk to me. The guy that, when the chips were down and I got shit, would always have my back. I went home that night (lived in Socal at the time) happier than I had been in a long, long time.

Since then, me, Zack, Esfand, and the rest of the guys ended up embarking on a new journey, one which would change us all forever: OTK. For those that have never had the privilege of starting their own company, heed my words: buy the fucking Rogaine from now, because that hair ain't sticking around for that shit. We were a bunch of fucking kids, clueless to the realities of the world and even more ignorant to how the games industry worked. Over the coming months and years, we made mistake after mistake, fuck up after fuck up. But somehow, through all of the bullshit, we survived. Not because we were smarter or better than anyone else, but because we trusted each other. And no matter what happens, we will never break that trust.

Zack and I met a few nights ago and talked... a lot. We opened up and shared things that we have never shared with anyone in our lives, including family. He talked to me about things he'd been feeling, stresses he's had, and the burdens he'd been carrying recently and throughout his entire life. When he said he wanted to step back, it was not a question, work be damned. He NEEDS this, and he knows the companies he has BUILT need it too.

Make no mistake, Zack said some hurtful things the other day, nuance and technicalities aside. He hurt a lot of people. He hurt me. But if we had to shun everyone in our lives who said something ignorant, inappropriate, or hurtful, we would all die alone. If we shut out every disagreement or misunderstanding instead of approaching each other with dialogue and respect, we would never grow. And if we didn't take even the worst calamities in our lives as lessons to be learned and opportunities to become better versions of ourselves, then we would be failures as human beings.

For now, one thing stands above all else to us - we want Zack to grow. We want this experience to be the thing that hopefully gets him out of where he is. You guys know what his living situation is like. He knows it, we all do. It's not healthy. Locking yourself in a dark room 16 hours a day is not healthy. Eating and drinking junk food as your primary sustenance is not healthy. Browsing contentious subreddits all day is not healthy. We know this, because we've all been there. And for some of us that managed to get out, to escape, we want our business partner, mentor, and above all, friend, to make it out too.

We also have responsibilities to our staff, our partners, and the thousands of people around the world who have trusted us with their time and livelihoods. Do you think Zack, the same Zack I've written about here, the same Zack who you've watched for years, is going to be ok with those people being hurt? As callous as he may seem at times, brash, "big dick", and unapologetic, at the end of the day, he genuinely wants to do what makes the most people happy. I've seen it and lived it.

Even now, as fires are burning all around us, I'm taking the time to write this post because I want YOU to KNOW, whatever you think of Zack as a creator and entertainer, he is MORE as a person. And all of us at OTK, all of us in his personal life, all of the people who know him and care about him, will NEVER abandon him, even if we have to alter our business arrangements. He is not just a business partner to us, he is the OTK. The One True King. And we know this is not where his Kingdom falls, even if he has to take a break and work on himself a bit.

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