Conflicts between streamers and the community of WoW Classic are becoming more frequent and intense. However, some fans see potential in collaboration.
What’s the problem? Many fans of the currently beta WoW Classic see the participating streamers as an increasingly large problem. It started with people complaining that Blizzard only invites streamers and ignores the “regular players”.
The situation escalated over time. Players demand the banishment of certain streamers from WoW Classic and hold them responsible for everything they believe is currently wrong with Classic.
By now, there are many voices calling for servers specifically for streamers so that “the others can play in peace”.
Community vs. Streamer – What’s the truth?
What the streamers are doing: Streamers often do nothing more than play WoW Classic – and do so as humanly as possible:
- The inexperienced in WoW streamer Pokimane is getting trolled by the community
- Summit1g is struggling with an ancient mechanic
- The WoW great Asmongold is repeating old Classic jokes from 2004
With these actions, streamers achieve considerable success. They are also helping WoW regain its former glory. Through WoW Classic, World of Warcraft even briefly reached number one on Twitch ahead of the evergreens League of Legends and Fortnite.
What bothers people about streamers? However, there are also situations that really annoy Classic fans. Recently, the streamer sodapoppin has attracted attention.
Sodapoppin demanded a kind of social rating from players based on the favor of streamers. This did not sit well with large parts of the community. They saw this as an abuse of his “streamer privileges” and immediately fired back.
A group of people wants to take it upon themselves to include those who are ostracized by streamers like sodapoppin. Together they want to systematically go against streamers.
Is it really that bad? What sounds like a petty war is hardly understandable for part of the community. In several posts on the official forum, some of which have since been deleted, players also talk about the advantages that streamers bring along. They are happy about the popularity because:
- more people are playing Classic because of streamers
- a larger community promises more PvP and more “drama”
- streamers create “extra events” in the game
- there have always been conflicts in Vanilla as well. So it’s just like back then
However, on reddit, the fear that streamers bring a toxic community already prevails in smaller posts. But was it really that much different back then?
