UK MMORPG content creator RageDarling (aka Jess/rage) is about to kick off her latest PlebCon UK World of Warcraft meet-up event in Manchester.
The Welsh streamer, partner of Scan Computers and barbarian in episodic live TTRPG group Session Zero, has been running the events for one year now at Pixel Bar in Manchester.
The third event is taking place on January 18th 2024, with 38 of 40 tickets sold at the time of publishing this article.
PlebCon runs twice per year – once in January and once around July – to provide a space for World of Warcraft fans to meet up. But, the thing is, not all of them want to.
“The WoW community is really quiet, I’m not going to lie to you,” RageDarling tells Esports News UK. “There’s a lot of us that live and breathe it but that’s literally the problem, none of us want to actually socialise outside of the game.
“Everybody in my community is welcome with open arms to come along, but I also want to open the doors to the WoW community in general.
“The game can be super isolating sometimes and I just want to encourage people to step out of their comfort zone and make some IRL friends. Creating an environment that encompasses what guilds used to feel like is exactly what I’m trying to achieve.”
RageDarling
So where did the idea for PlebCon come from?
“Gosh, it’s really hard to pinpoint the initial influence from the idea, because I’ve been hosting meet-ups for years now,” RageDarling answers.
“One of my Manchester ones was documented by the BBC (see ‘RageDarling – the streamer’) and before that I did a couple in Cardiff, but it all kicked off in Colchester 2018 I believe.”
Rage’s previous events were known as RageCon, but it was rebranded to PlebCon last year because her guild is called the Pleborians.
“I rebranded because I wanted the events to be about the community (Pleborians) rather than about me,” RageDarling continues. “When I was a kid I loved that YouTubers would host meet and greets, and glorified those, but the idea of doing that for myself is gross, so I always made sure that the community was at the forefront of the events.”
What happens at PlebCon?
“PlebCon is a community-ran event from my community, specifically for World of Warcraft players alike!” RageDarling says. “We host at Pixel Bar in Manchester, which is a wicked gaming bar hosting a range of triple-A games and retro arcade cabs. They also serve a great selection of gaming cocktails!
“Guests attending will have free to play access of the consoles and a bunch of goodies on arrival. And the imfamous Pleb quiz takes place in the evening.
“The second day comprises competitions throughout the day to see which team will be crowned the Pleb winner, following on with some beer pong and Jenga – and finishing off the night with a pop-punk DJ club night.
“The final day is a group activity day where we take the guests around Manchester to see what it has to offer.”
January 🗓️
— rage 🙂 (@RageDarling) December 31, 2023
I hosted my very first gaming event for my community that was sponsored. Supported by @IntelUK, @ScanComputers, @Corsair and @Elgato 💙
20+ Plebs across the world came together to hangout, drink and have the time of their lives. It was incredible. pic.twitter.com/EQwQxHLRMo
Rage says the events aren’t just about meeting the community and making friends.
“I also make sure everyone is entertained throughout the day and competitions are an amazing way I do this,” she says. “I usually come up with a bunch of activities for the guests to get involved in – completely voluntary – but thanks to my amazing sponsors I’m able to give away incredible prizes to the winners and runners up.
“This time around, World of Warcraft has given me a Sylvanas Statue worth £500, and a total of over £800 worth of prizes for example! Pretty cool.”
There’s more info on the events at ragedarling.co.uk/plebcon.
‘Well met!’ – other UK WoW activities and personalities
The UK has a host of WoW/MMO talent, including players, content creators, hosts and more.
Other well-known content creators include Preach, MrGM, Psybear and Taliesin (of Taliesin & Evitel) to name a few, plus one of the longest-running competitive raid guilds, Method, were established in the UK, with their founder Scott ‘Sco’ McMillan from Scotland.
The WoW community of course extends into other games like Hearthstone, Warcraft Rumble, Warcraft 3 and more, with personalities like Raven, Sottle and many more.
RageDarling says: “Preach hosts his own community event (PreachCon) which I went to last year and it was sick, but I felt a huge presence of Final Fantasy gamers and a lot of the themes were aimed towards FF, which made sense when you consider that Preach was just starting out on his adventures in Eorzea.
“Psybear hosted his event Psycon which was a lovely gathering of WoW gamers but considerably smaller than PlebCon, still wicked though. Other than that, I literally don’t know of any other World of Warcraft-orientated meetup. That’s why I stamped WoW onto my meetup and shifted from RageCon to PlebCon.”
With the last PlebCon drawing around 17 attendees and the latest one looking to sell out with 40 guests, the future is looking bright for Pleborians and UK Warcraft fans.
For a demographic known for grinding out long gaming sessions at sometimes unsociable hours (RIP our university studies back in the vanilla WoW days), the MMO community, in our opinion, actually has a togetherness not found in many other games or genres, leading to greater potential for IRL events.
The likes of PreachCon, Psycon and PlebCon are providing an opportunity for MMO fans to make friends and have fun in-person here in the UK, and we’re all for it.
Related article: Real-life actors, quests & potions: Why we need more experiential events like Red Bull’s Battle for Azeroth launch in London
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
