Our #1 Most Influential Player of All Time is… Kripparrian! We speak to the man himself about his illustrious career

Esports.gg and Frodan have been collaborating to reveal the "Top 8 Most Influential Hearthstone Players of All Time" list! We revealed a new player every day in the run-up until Christmas. Today it is time to complete our rankings by unveiling that Kripparrian our #1 Most Influential Hearthstone Player of All Time!

Octavian “Kripparrian” Morosan is a name that’s well-known within the Hearthstone community. He is not only a Twitch livestreamer, but also a content creator, tournament organizer and caster. He's been involved in everything from the Hearthstone World Championship at Blizzcon to Twitch Rivals. He's also a keen participant in local Fireside Gatherings. 

In honour of his victory in our rankings, we conducted an interview with Kripparrian himself! Now as he requested for us to keep his rank a secret, we hope he will be reading this with a smile on his face.

Top 8 Most Influential Players of All Time

For those unaware, before Kripparrian got into Hearthstone, he was already into content creation with games such as World of Warcraft and Diablo. That said, when jumped on the Hearthstone beta, his channels saw a lot of growth.

“Well, the basis for all this content creation wasn't so much of a science,” he said. “I basically set out with a plan when I started streaming, almost 10 years ago, that I would try to make daily YouTube content.” 

Daily content is a habit he still keeps up to this day. In the last two weeks, Kripp has posted two Hearthstone videos a DAY on his YouTube channel. An achievement few creators would be able to match, especially over this long of a time-frame.

“At the end of the day, you probably should just play what you like because Hearthstone can be pretty repetitive,” Kripparrian said. “It's an RNG game, it can be difficult to play through the unlucky times. You just play what you play. Try to have some fun. Most of the time you do, sometimes you don't.”

When it comes to the videos on his YouTube channel, Kripparrian noted that it’s more targeted. Hearthstone’s format and design allow games to last for about 10 to 20 minutes, which he said is ideal for content creation. 

Whenever there’s a new expansion out, Kripparrian usually approaches it by playing a bunch of decks that pique his interest. As the statistics for these cards and decks come in, whether in the first few hours or first couple of days, Kripparrian begins to refine his builds.  

“The process is usually you come up with a rough idea,” he said. “If it's a good one, it will be meta or close to it or played by enough people where it has a consideration in the meta.” 

One thing that Kripparrian likes to do is go through the best decks from the previous expansion and use online tools to sort by the different cards and how often players win if they draw them. He then builds upon the core of what's already there.

Kripparrian recalled that it has always been fun to push for Hearthstone events. He also noted Blizzard’s effort to create a system like a league with a format that can continue on and on. 

“And that's one of the parts I actually didn't like about competitive Hearthstone,” he explained. “I feel like events are more interesting if they are as little as a regular ladder of play as possible.” Kripparrian added that in the early days, the tournaments worked because Hearthstone was a new game and the events did a good job of teaching viewers how to play it in innovative ways. 

The reason he participates in events as opposed to the more competitive side of Hearthstone is that he wants to stay on the pulse of what's happening in the game beyond just the scene of playing it in one’s home. 

“When Rania and I took it upon ourselves to do the Challengestone format, it was one of the first few times it was done in the community because up to that point, it was just vanilla tournaments,” Kripparrian said. “And, you know, we didn't really have a goal of becoming tournament organizers, right? Like, it's a lot of work. But our goal was to just push the tournament scene forward and show people that this can work.” 

Kripparrian added that Challengestone was successful in showing players that when it's done right, it’s possible to go beyond a vanilla tournament format.

“I think we haven't done that many events lately,” Kripparrian said. “I feel like the event space has kind of settled in. Sometimes you participate, sometimes not.” He attributed the fewer number of events to the pandemic as well. 

In terms of Kripparrian’s plans for the future, he said he doesn’t plan to change too much. He would continue streaming and creating YouTube videos.

“I bought a camper van,” he added. “We might do some more IRL adventures. It's really difficult to say how much of that can be witnessed by others. Right now, we’re working on like a few YouTube videos, and we try to keep them up on social media, on Twitter and Instagram. But more than that, it's a bit of a moving thing. Internet in the car is still not quite there in 2021. We'll see about 2022.”