Rarran’s success history: How did he become Hearthstone’s fastest-growing YouTube channel?

Rarran has been a Hearthstone content creator for over three years now. However, it was a recent change he made that made his YouTube channel spike. Six months ago, Rarran confessed he felt lost when creating Hearthstone content.

What secret formula of success made him almost triple his YouTube subscribers count? Today we will go over the decision that changed Rarran’s content creation career.

Six months ago, Rarran posted a video on his YouTube channel openly talking about how lost he felt in terms of what content to produce. At the time, he was doing mainly Mercenaries gameplay videos. 

With a bit over 30k subscribers and 10k weekly views on his videos, Rarran was doing well. His metrics were steady for the last three months. The underlying problem with that was that wasn’t seen any growth. That is one of the most frightening sensations a content creator faces.

Despite his viewer count being decent, he felt his channel was stagnated and that he couldn’t find a way out of that.

In the video, Rarran explains that almost a year ago, he realized how much the Hearthstone metagame dictated viewership. United in Stormwind combo-based metagame wasn’t only linear for players but viewers. Once you’ve seen the trick once, you know what to expect and don’t need to watch it again. 

He thought that Mercenaries could be his way out of this. Unfortunately, time proved him wrong. With Hearthstone Mercenaries’ hype dying earlier than he expected, Rarran was at a crossroads. Then was when he took a career-changing decision.

Inspired by SmallAnt, Rarran decided to take his Hearthstone content to another level. While Rarran kept his focus on Hearthstone, he put a twist on his content. That is how, six months ago, Rarran started a series of videos that had nothing to do with simple gameplay. 

A “Hearthstone Speedrun” and “A robot tells me what to buy in Battlegrounds” were his first attempts at making something different. Scoring a huge success with the Hearthstone Speedrun video, it had over 40k views, Rarran went for more. A documentary series of why many players left Hearthstone was next on his list.

DisguisedToast, Firebat, Reynad and Kolento are all icons Hearthstone fans worshiped. Rarran took that and made a high-effort documentary series that explained who they were and, most importantly, why they left the game. With over 100k views on each video, his YouTube channel started to pop.

But how long can someone milk the fame of former players? If he were to stay away from just gameplay, he knew he needed new content ideas for his growth to continue, and there he found a gem in the mud. A video about the impact Nozdormu had in the game, a fringe meme card that caused absolute chaos in Hearthstone. Viewers loved it! It yielded HALF A MILLION VIEWS.

Rarran discovered a way to make Hearthstone content that could stay relevant way longer than gameplay ever would. Taking a huge risk and putting in the effort, he transformed his YouTube channel into something that stood out from the rest. However, this was not everything. There were more big-brain ideas that would elevate his channel’s presence, and not just within the Hearthstone community.

Taking advantage of the increased exposure, Rarran took his game to another level and started inviting other creators to be a part of his videos. He made two new series of videos “Do you know Hearthstone?” and “Card Game Player Guess”, which were another game-changer.

What better to grow your channel than to attract other communities with your content? Why limit yourself to just Hearthstone and not go for the whole card game category? 

RegisKillbin, Zeddy, Trump, Kripparrian, Reynad, Alliestraza, RDU and even Thijs were happy to participate in his videos. But as we said, he didn’t stop there. He reached out to personalities from other card games. GrappLr, PVDDR and Snnuy also joined him in cross-game trivia.

Rarran’s channel went STONKS and became a Hearthstone content hub. His viewership now is independent of how enjoyable the meta is. The risk yielded a huge reward. But let’s not fool ourselves, the key factor behind the growth is how much effort, dedication and creativity he puts into his channel.

Rarran’s evergreen Hearthstone content, months old, is still pulling up views today. His YouTube channel is heading towards 90k subscribers with steady growth. Views are increasing week after week, offering the added value that even his old content is still relevant.

This is every content creator's dream. His channel is an example of how to approach gaming content from a different angle. There is nothing wrong with editing and posting streamed gameplay. However, when you are doing the same as everyone else, it's a lot harder to stand out.

I hope that you all enjoyed this article and that it can inspire you too to make something different. It’s hard to go out of your comfort zone, but you have to risk it for the biscuit, and as Michel Scott once said, you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.

Stay tuned to Esports.gg for more Hearthstone news and updates. As Rarran says, you look fantastic!