World of Warcraft (WoW) is the go-to MMO, known even beyond gaming circles as a foundational, genre-defining franchise. In the live-streaming space WoW consistently outperforms almost every other MMO in terms of viewership( with the occasional exception of its old-school competitor Runescape). Coming up to its 20 year anniversary, WoW has weathered shifts in the industry all while retaining its classic expansion pack release format.
The latest expansion, The War Within, begins a new three-part saga in the world of Azeroth, hoping to bring back players who felt disillusioned with the storylines from the Battle for Azeroth and Shadowlands expansions. With glorious new realms like Hallowfall – a verdant cavern illuminated by a shimmering giant crystal embedded above – players old and new are hyping up The War Within as a return to form for the series.
In this article, we’re looking at whether this hype for The War Within is translating to live-streaming viewership, and whether WoW’s expansions are managing to gain traction with an online audience.
WoW: The War Within Sees Viewers Leveraging Early Access for a Sneak Peek
Dissecting the reception of The War Within on live streaming is complicated by Blizzard’s new approach to releasing the expansion. For the first time ever, a WoW expansion launched with an early access option for those players who were willing to pay for a headstart on other players. As a result, early-access players began streaming The War Within on the 22nd of August, while all other players gained access to the game on the 26th of August.
Looking at viewership for the early access period alone reveals 8.6M hours watched of The War Within content – roughly half the viewership of the first full week’s release viewership at 16.3M hours watched. Intriguingly, despite the option to check out the game early as a viewer, it seems most viewers held off until after the full release. As a result, the early access period had an average minute viewership (AMA) of 51.2K while the full release week saw an AMA of 84.7K.
Viewed either way, this number is a great success among MMOs. For comparison, when Final Fantasy XIV released its Dawntrail expansion back in July, it saw just 15.4M hours watched across the entire debut month. The War Within’s popularity is attributed to a few key factors: Improved story, improved realms, and most importantly, a greater respect for the time of the core WoW fanbase. As an example, Reputation earned on characters now applies to all of a player’s alts (alternative characters). And new mini-dungeons called “Delves” provide 15-minute one-shot adventures to squeeze into players’ busy schedules.
The Top WoW Streamers are Classic Fans Checking out What’s New in Retail
As a legacy gaming franchise, WoW has another advantage: The ability to grab the attention of mega-popular streamers by default. Respected voices in the hardcore gaming space tune in to WoW expansions to give their opinion on the state of the franchise, including streamers like PirateSoftware and zackrawrr with 1.7M and 732K hours watched, respectively. Big streamers generally can’t commit as much airtime to the game however, leaving a second, more dedicated type of streamer with a lot of viewership. Towelliee is a great example of this, generating 1.1M hours watched with an airtime of 277 hours.
Blizzard drew on the influencing power of many streamers with a couple of community events for The War Within. These included the Support a Streamer event in which viewers who gifted subs to participating streamers were rewarded with a special Watcher of the Huntress pet, and a successful Twitch Drops campaign which saw viewers earning a Ghastly Charger mount. Blizzard has always understood that combining in-game loot with much-loved content creators like Sodapoppin is a recipe for success when launching new content.
The War Within Doesn’t Match Up To WoW’s Previous Expansions on Debut
While The War Within was received well, its performance falls short of previous WoW expansions. Looking at the debut week performance of WoW expansions on live streaming, The War Within comes last with just 17.3M hours watched while the most popular WoW retail expansion was Shadowlands with 32.8M hours watched (where The War Within’s viewership is taken from the beginning of early access). There is a massive caveat here though: Shadowlands launched during the pandemic, boosting viewership despite the expansion’s negative fan reception. Additionally, the first raids for The War Within won’t launch until September 10th, and it’s generally this late game content that brings viewers to live-streaming platforms.
Back in 2019, Blizzard also launched World of Warcraft Classic, a return to the base game for old fans of the series. WoW Classic was a phenomenal marketing success, with just shy of 60M hours watched in its debut week. Obviously nostalgia played a role in the game’s success, but it was also a welcome departure from Battle for Azeroth which strayed ever further from the series’ origins. The subsequent “Classic” expansions fared less well however, sitting at debut week viewerships of 23.4M and 18.1M hours watched.
Expansions may be old school in a world of live service games, but the model is a clever way of creating the feeling of regular full game releases (like the Call of Duty franchise) with all the convenience of the seasons system (as seen with Fortnite). This new content has kept WoW fresh, and the future looks brighter than ever: The War Within is kicking off a three-part saga, and WoW Classic continues to catch up to the retail version of the title. Stream Hatchet will be watching as The War Within releases new raids on September 10th.
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