The latest Race to World First event for World of Warcraft concluded after just under two weeks of grinding and raiding. The race was the final new raid until The War Within arrives in 2024, and it was one of the closest and most exciting Race to World First events in recent times.
The Race to World First Amidrassil The Dreams Hope event catapulted World of Warcraft to the top games on Twitch, and during the race, the game received over 48M Hours Watched on the purple platform, making it the 2nd most-watched game on Twitch for the two week period.
With many of the top players and guilds live-streaming the race, the Race to World First: Amirdrassil event drew in 25.47M Hours Watched in total. All of the world’s best guilds were running nearly nonstop throughout the fortnight, and almost 300 hours of broadcasting time was accumulating across the more than 50 channels to live-stream the race.
The most-watched of these channels was the official Echo_Esports Twitch channel for their guild. The channel recorded 8.92M Hours Watched, 35% of the total watch time for the race. Echo_Esports was not only the most dominant channel to broadcast the event, but the guild was also the ultimate victor of the race. It was an extremely close finish between them and Team Liquid, with both guilds managing to get the final boss below 2% HP.
The moment Echo Esports managed to finish off the final boss of the race
The close photo finish for the event led to the race becoming the most popular World of Warcraft event of the year. The event was far more popular than the two Race to World First events held in 2022, and it garnered 38K+ more Peak Viewers than Race to World First Castle Nathria, which was the most popular race of 2020.
Thanks to the 388.8K Peak Viewers coming from the Race to World First event, World of Warcraft was able to set a new peak viewership record for 2023 on Twitch. In total, the beloved title was able to reach 470.9K Peak Viewers on Twitch, becoming by far the most popular moment for the game in 2023.
This makes 2023 a more popular year for World of Warcraft than 2021 when the Burning Crusade Classic expansion was released in June. Expansions are normally what brings peak viewership to the MMORPG game; the peaks recorded in 2020 and 2022 were both thanks to expansions released for the title.
With such a historically close and popular Race to World First event, which of the top guilds to stream the event was the most popular choice for fans to spectate? Ultimately, Echo Esports solidified itself as not only the top guild competitively, but also the top guild on Twitch for the event.
The three most popular guilds to broadcast the Race to World First were Echo Esports, Team Liquid, and Method. Method was the least popular of these three guilds, receiving a nevertheless substantial 19.5K Peak Viewers and accumulating over 2.57M Hours Watched throughout the gruelling race.
Team Liquid fell into the middle of the pack, achieving 109.6K Peak Viewers while racing Echo Esports to the finish line. The esports organisation accumulated 10.61M Hours Watched on their various broadcasts for the event, but their official TeamLiquid channel’s broadcast was not the most popular option for fans.
Team Liquid’s Guild Master and Raid Leader, Maximum, was the second most popular channel to cover the event. The guild leader was the channel to reach 109.6K Peak Viewers for Team Liquid during the final moments of the event. In total, he accumulated 6.22M Hours Watched on his personal Twitch channel. Maximum was the second-most-watched and second-most popular channel of the event, outperforming the viewership of his guild’s official channel.
However, Echo Esports was not to be outdone here either, and with the combined viewership of their guild, the organisation achieved over 11M Hours Watched. The most popular guild member from Echo Esports was GingiTv. The Danish streamer received slightly less viewership than Method’s official guild channel, but he was slightly more popular: having received 25.2K Peak Viewers.
Race to World First Amirdrassil The Dreams Hope will go down as a historic race in WoW lore. The event not only featured a thrilling photo finish between two of the best guilds in the game but also became the most popular RWF event. World of Warcraft is undergoing a live-streaming renaissance with the viewership brought in from popular live-streamers in sodapoppin’s live-streaming guild, but the esports side of the game proved that it is still growing and evolving its viewership.
