On August 26, fan favourite MMORPG World of Warcraft saw the release of its 10th expansion, The War Within. The expansion is the first of three in the Worldsoul Saga, which will continue with “Midnight” and “The Last Titan” in the upcoming years. World of Warcraft has enjoyed a considerable boost to its viewership thanks to this new expansion and Twitch Drops, which have catapulted the title to Twitch’s 4th-most-watched category.
Since release, The War Within expansion has helped WoW to generate 8.17M Hours Watched on Twitch, an increase of 27% compared to the previous days before the expansion’s release. The game generated 319.1K Peak Viewers for the new expansion release, and it maintained 116.7K Average Viewers across the three days since release.
Currently, World of Warcraft stands as Twitch’s fourth-most-watched category and third-most-watched game. The viewership boost from the new expansion was what WoW needed to break into the top 5 categories on the purple platform, and during the days after release the game ranked higher than League of Legends, Valorant, Counter-Strike, and many others of the globe’s favourite games.
An important factor for the viewership of the new expansion has been Twitch Drops. Players can earn mounts and pets through the Drops, and since the release of the expansion, the top 15 most-watched World of Warcraft streams all mention Twitch Drops in their stream title. Drops are clearly crucial for the title’s viewership on Twitch, but the channels hosting these Drops have just as big of an impact.
PirateSoftware was the most-watched streamer to have covered The War Within, having received 620K Hours Watched. The former Blizzard employee turned streamer has built up a cult audience for himself this year, and he boasted one of the largest audiences of any streamer to cover the new World of Warcraft release.
Some streamers such as Towelliee benefited from hosting non-stop broadcasts since release, with the American streamer having generated 398K Hours Watched. Despite ranking as the second-most-watched streamer for World of Warcraft, he recorded one of the lowest average concurrent viewerships of all streamers here.
Zackrawrr, aka Asmongold, generated 235K Hours Watched with only just over 5 total hours of broadcasting time. The North American WoW fanatic was busy broadcasting the game since its early-access release, and he lost some steam by the time the official release came around. He had by far the largest audience of any streamer to cover the new expansion, with 44.1K Average Viewers.
Other North American streamers Maximum and sodapoppin placed around the middle of our ranking, with two of the lowest broadcasting times for any top 10 streamer here. The two Americans enjoyed high viewerships throughout their broadcasts, enabling them to generate lots of watch time quickly.
European streamers generally could not match the viewership of these highly popular North American streamers. GingiTV came the closest with 244K Hours Watched; the Dane is a professional World of Warcraft player with ECHO Esports, who recently won The Great Push 2024. His reputation within the WoW community helped him to become Europe’s most-watched World of Warcraft streamer for the new expansion’s release.
Taking advantage of the hype for the new expansion and the Twitch Drops integration, streamers Naguura and GoldGoblinNET from Europe were able to record personal viewership records while streaming World of Warcraft these past few days.
While viewership for World of Warcraft has clearly been high these past few days, The War Within is actually one of the least popular WoW releases in recent memory. Compared to the release viewership for the previous two expansions, Dragonflight and Shadowlands, The War Within did not come close to match the viewership peaks achieved by these two expansions.
Shadowlands generated 17.35M Hours Watched in only three days, and World of Warcraft viewership on Twitch reached 947.4K Peak Viewers. The expansion also helped WoW to become Twitch’s second-most-watched category, falling only behind the Just Chatting section. Dragonflight was also highly-watched, although it did record 2.6% fewer Hours Watched and a lower peak viewership.
Worth considering is the fact that the Epic Edition early access for The War Within was the first time a WoW campaign featured an early access option. This does mean that viewership statistics for the official release were lower, however, even when data from August 22 to 28 is considered, The War Within still recorded fewer Hours Watched than the previous expansion release. Early access may have spread viewership for the expansion release across a longer period of time, but The War Within still maintained the downward viewership trend.
Arguably the most alarming metric for Blizzard would be the Peak Channels metric. For Shadowlands’ release, 25.8K Peak Channels went live to broadcast their experience with the new expansion, but this metric fell by 50.5% for Dragonflight, and fell another 67.3% for The War Within, according to official release statistics. World of Warcraft is not only losing viewership on Twitch, but also losing streamers who will broadcast the game, which could negatively impact the brand awareness for the game.
In summary, while the new The War Within expansion has been wildly successful thanks to Twitch Drops and popular North American streamers covering the release, it could not match the reception that previous expansion have received upon release. Blizzard have announced that the two upcoming expansions will be released on a shorter timeframe than previous ones, which usually come out once every two years, so maybe this quicker turnaround time on expansions will help the title to generate more viewership in the future.
