WoW Classic top streamer Asmongold surpassed Fortnite streamer Tfue in hours watched on Twitch in August, a remarkable increase for a game that had previously fallen off the top of the charts in terms of viewership metrics. WoW Classic is one of the summer's hottest games and has managed to make good on the promise that Blizzard made to fans, reviving the 2006 vanilla experience in an almost perfectly-preserved form. The decision to go ahead with the unconventional re-release, which preserves even the most hated mechanics of WoW Classic, has rewarded Blizzard with a huge boost in visibility for the brand as a whole.
Twitch as a platform experienced a tough summer, but it's unclear how much that's affecting the business's bottom line. The most major change came when Twitch megastar Tyler "Ninja" Blevins announced he was leaving the streaming platform for Microsoft's Mixer on an exclusive deal. Ninja has been thriving on Mixer, but it doesn't appear to have trickled down to that platform's other content creators, while Twitch saw little change in its number of active viewers, even in Fortnite, where Ninja had made his name. A recent racism scandal involving Tfue has brought into question how much Twitch is willing to adhere to its own moderation policies, however, and that decision - which still hasn't been made - could be a large factor in how people view the company moving forward.
For WoW Classic, though, it was an undeniably incredible August. Top streamer Asmongold not only leapt up the rankings in Twitch metrics according to StreamElements (via GamesIndustry.biz), he surpassed Tfue, the top Twitch streamer now that Ninja has left. Asmongold surpassed 10 million hours watched in August, soaking up a combination of the views spurred on by WoW Classic's release and, undoubtedly, some of the ones left on the table by Ninja. WoW Classic itself also exhibited Twitch viewership growth of 84%, instantly propelling it into the top five most watched games in August, just behind Dota 2 - which broadcast its International 2019 tournament in August - and ahead of the Just Chatting category.
WoW Classic had just under 68 million hours of content watched in August on Twitch, and Asmongold reaped most of the benefits, although fellow WoW Classic streamer sodapoppin found himself in the top 10 streamers as well. The rest of that list is, predictably, dominated by Fortnite stars and streaming personalities who carry huge audiences with them regardless of what they play.
It's big news for WoW Classic that, even if for a month, it was able to help bolster Asmongold's stream into becoming the most viewed on Twitch in terms of hours watched in August. Fortnite, and by extension Ninja and Tfue, has been dominant for so long that even a brief shift in the rankings is notable. The next question will be if WoW Classic can sustain its popularity beyond the first month of launch and truly re-establish itself as one of streaming's premier viewership experiences.
Source: StreamElements (via GamesIndustry.biz)