No one in the world has more viewers on Twitch streaming World of Warcraft than the streamer Asmongold. He recently asked his chat who still plays and who has already stopped. The result left him incredulous.
Who is it about? Asmongold is the largest WoW streamer on Twitch and has been a well-known figure in the community for many years. With nearly 2 million followers, he even ranks in the top 100 largest streamers overall.
With his nerdy style, he polarizes viewers and fans strongly, but still reaches an average of almost 36,000 viewers simultaneously (via sullygnome; as of April 23). While WoW Classic was in hype, Asmongold even reached number 1 in the Twitch charts.
At the beginning of 2021, Asmongold announced an indefinite break. His fans were worried about the streamer, but he returned in mid-March.
Now Asmongold has problems again with WoW and his stream, thinking that the MMORPG “will kill his stream.” In a survey, he wanted to know from his viewers who still plays and seems stunned by the result.
Survey shocks Asmongold
In one of his recent recordings, Asmongold asked his viewers very specifically: “If you played Shadowlands or the end of BfA, have you stopped playing WoW?” Battle for Azeroth is the least popular expansion of WoW and looking into the community, frustration is slowly spreading with Shadowlands as well.
This is the result: To Asmongold’s surprise, over half of the participants stated that they no longer play or not at all. Out of 5441 responses, the answers were
- 39 % Yes[, I’ve stopped]
- 26 % No[, I still play]
- 19 % I play WoW Classic
- 17 % I don’t play WoW lol
The streamer reacts in astonishment. Asmongold says: “Over half of the people aren’t playing the game. Wow, wow. That’s crazy. I don’t know what to say. Really not.” You can find the survey in the embedded YouTube video starting at 11:28:
“I would rather kill my stream than watch WoW die”
The survey came about because Asmongold has doubts about the success of his stream if he continues to show only WoW. He believes: WoW is a dying game. Everyone knows that, and he sees the danger that his stream could also lose viewers or even die as a result.
He would rather switch to other games, even if his viewers do not support him in doing so. He specifically says:
I think many people would rather see me try something new. Maybe not, and then I’ll look like an asshole. But it is what it is. But I would rather try it and see what happens. […]
I would rather kill my stream trying something else than sit in WoW and watch [the game] die.
His stream is doing incredibly well, but according to Asmongold, that won’t last. If he continues to stream only WoW, he believes that it would kill his channel. By now, he is even trying out other games and recently frequently showed “ALT F4”, a game designed to make its players rage:
Is WoW a “dying game”?
The accusation that WoW is dying has existed for about as long as the game itself. Nevertheless, it has managed to last for almost 17 years and over eight expansions. Shadowlands was even the fastest-selling PC game of all time.
For a dying or dead game, those are pretty good numbers. Nevertheless, there is a certain dissatisfaction to be found in the community, especially regarding Blizzard’s creativity. Recently, there have been repeated complaints about how the story of Sylvanas Windrunner is being milked, one of the antagonists in Shadowlands and one of the most well-known figures in Warcraft.
A book about Sylvanas is even being released, and many players are fed up with the Banshee being “shoved in their face” time and again (via reddit). Nevertheless, many players hope that with Patch 9.1 more will come that they can do.
In the background, however, noticeably more is changing. Many of Blizzard’s old faces are leaving the studio and turning to new projects. Most of the “fathers” have already left, and the latest loss for Blizzard is the charismatic Jeff Kaplan, who was previously the Game Director for WoW:
