League of Legends is a major game that is also played by many streamers and YouTubers as a main focus. Many players play with smurf accounts to make their videos and streams more exciting. The German streamer NoWay4u explains in a video why this is the case.
The German LoL streamer NoWay4u knows what he is talking about. He is one of the largest Twitch streamers in the field of League of Legends. NoWay streams a lot of LoL himself. In a recent stream, he spoke generally about LoL content and why many streamers smurf.
A smurf account is a low-ranked account played by a significantly better player. Many players see this as a bad thing because it renders ranks obsolete. You lose because a significantly better player suddenly appears in the lower ranks.
NoWay, on the other hand, does not see this fundamentally negatively, because for content creators it sometimes just can’t be helped.
The viewers don’t want High Elo
What does NoWay say about it? In one of his recent streams, NoWay talked about LoL as content (via YouTube). He starts by explaining that it is easy for stream snipers to find matches of streamers in High Elo. This allows the sniper to see the streamer’s map and gain advantages. Or he trolls in the game to annoy the streamer.
High Elo simply has significantly fewer players, which makes it easy to find streamers. He then talks about the player AloisNL, a Riven player who used to play High Elo. He no longer does that because, according to NoWay, he realized that it brings fewer viewers.
NoWay explains that AloisNL noticed that his viewers prefer low-Elo content. By creating content where he takes down players in lower ranks, his numbers have indeed grown. Another reason mentioned is coaching. It is better advertising to completely dominate your opponents than to show a close match in High Elo. You can “sell it better”.
But maintaining High Elo is hard, exhausting, and can sometimes be bad for the viewers because the games are very close and frustrating.
NoWay also mentions that it is more relaxing for the streamer since one is less frustrated by close matches.
However, there are also disadvantages. Despite the relaxed playing and constant winning, there are disadvantages, as NoWay explains.
It’s just a constant high. But the problem is, if you do that for too long […] you’ll get worse and sooner or later you won’t be able to play High Elo anymore, because every now and then you still have to play High Elo, and that’s where the problem slowly starts to come.
NoWay about High Elo streamers who smurf (source: YouTube)
He explains that you simply get worse and sooner or later have to smurf at lower ranks. However, it may be that the community eventually wants to see you play High Elo again.
Even for him, the community prefers to see other projects rather than High Elo. As a good example, he mentions coaching other content creators, where he had many viewers.
He is also addressed about his own clickbait for the videos. He tried it for a while without clickbait, but the account lost over half of its clicks. NoWay explains that one must “gently clickbait”. Otherwise, according to him, the account would simply die. However, the streamer has been dissatisfied with League of Legends for some time: “If nothing changes, I’m gone” – will NoWay quit LoL soon?
