In February 2020, there is a big winner in gaming on Twitch: It’s the MMORPG World of Warcraft, but not WoW Classic, which was so strong in 2019, but actually the modern WoW. The reason is the race for the World First between the guilds Limit and Method.
So what do the numbers for WoW look like in February 2020? In the last 7 days, interest in WoW on Twitch has increased tremendously:
- 16 million hours were watched, which places WoW at number 2 among games, only League of Legends is more popular.
- The numbers for WoW more than doubled within 7 days.
More than half of these 16 million hours come from just two channels:
- The channel of the WoW guild Method was watched for 6.5 million hours – that’s a considerable lead at number 1 on Twitch ahead of Summit1g, who was playing Escape from Tarkov.
- The channel of “Limit_Maximum” was watched for 2.1 million hours – that’s number 3 on Twitch.
World First race was watched for 8 million hours
What happened there? The race for the World First Kill on Mythic at the new raid boss N’Zoth in the raid Ny’alotha, which was added in the current WoW Patch 8.3, was underway.
The race started on January 28. As a US guild, Limit had a lead of about half a day due to different reset times.
The race between the top guilds remained exciting for a long time. The US guild Limit was ahead, but because some bosses were still not balanced and were changed by Blizzard during the race, they were set back repeatedly.
Especially N’Zoth himself proved to be a tough nut to crack.
Who won the race? In the end, the US guild Limit actually won the race. They killed N’Zoth in the night from Thursday to Friday our time.
Method congratulated the winners, it was the first US World First since Mists of Pandaria. Method itself was only able to defeat N’Zoth on Saturday afternoon.
Nonetheless, Limit is far behind on Twitch:
- Method streamed for 164 hours and was watched for 6.5 million hours by an average of 40,000 viewers. They were streaming continuously.
- Limit was only on for 95 hours and had only 2.1 million hours with an average of 21,000 viewers.
However, Limit wins in one category: In peak viewers, they are ahead of Method. Because when the kill on N’Zoth happened, 124,818 viewers were watching on Twitch. Method didn’t reach that high.
On Friday, however, Limit’s viewership dropped significantly, with only an average of 8,400 players watching, as the World First happened in the night from Thursday to Friday and what else would people want to see?
Curious moment from WoW goes viral
This was the most popular clip from the race: The Twitch clip with the most views was not the kill on N’Zoth, but the moment when Blizzard “deleted” the boss and knocked Limit off track.
One can assume that WoW only made a short sprint to the top of Twitch and in the coming weeks, the hours on Twitch will drop significantly again.
At the release of WoW Classic, WoW was steadily on top of Twitch for several months. The star from that time, Asmongold, is currently taking a break.
