The Twitch streamer Maximilian “HandOfBlood” Knabe has been gaming since his youth. A reaction to an older documentary about World of Warcraft inspired him to share stories from his early days of gaming.
What does HandOfBlood recall from back then? In a past Twitch stream, HandOfBlood watched a 3sat documentary from the 2000s. It focuses on the rise of World of Warcraft, highlighting gamers and their concerned parents. Many parents seemed to worry that their children were addicted.
When HandOfBlood sees a clip from a LAN party back then, he gets excited and talks about how it was for him to have gaming as a hobby.
“They were the cool kids to me”
What was it like for HandOfBlood back then? In his youth, HandOfBlood says he couldn’t experience the “typical” clan or LAN party experiences. He simply didn’t have enough money to afford good internet and a capable PC. Also, he was too young for such things at that time.
Therefore, he spent a lot of time at friends’ houses to share gaming experiences. Instead of playing on official servers, which were too expensive, he preferred gaming on private servers or offline. For example, he played Counter-Strike against bots without internet or 3 against 3 with his friends when he was with them.
HandOfBlood wishes he could have had the experiences of a LAN party during his teenage years. He says, “They were the cool kids to me.” (Source: YouTube starting at minute 08:59).
His parents sent him outside after they thought he had spent enough time on the PC. Instead of meeting friends outside, he went to an internet café to continue gaming.
He says he only got better conditions at the age of 16 or 18. At that time, he had a decent PC and an internet flat-rate.
What’s it like for HandOfBlood nowadays? Today, HandOfBlood is one of the biggest Twitch streamers in the German-speaking area. He has over 1.5 million followers on Twitch and averaged 10,603 viewers during his streams last year (Source: SullyGnome).
In the past, HandOfBlood couldn’t really afford good equipment for gaming, but today he earns money playing video games.
HandOfBlood wants to start playing World of Warcraft again in the future, among other things with his Twitch colleagues Papaplatte and Metashi. But even before starting, there’s a simple issue: German Twitch streamers want to start their own hardcore guild in WoW, but they almost fail before it even starts
