Popular Twitch streamer Michael "Shroud" Grzesiek confirms that World of Warcraft is "killing" his Twitch channel, but he doesn't seem to mind. Activision Blizzard recently released the latest World of Warcraft expansion, and from that point, its Twitch views have spiked and fallen dramatically for channels that only dabble in the game like Shroud.
During a December 20 Twitch stream, Shroud stated that World of Warcraft is his favorite game to play, but he can't play it as much as he'd like because viewership drops when he does. While Dragonflight was released at the end of November, World of Warcraft also released Wrath of the Lich King: Classic in September, which resulted in two popular months for the MMO at the tail end of the year. Shroud has particularly taken to Wrath of the Lich King: Classic, but the expansion World of Warcraft: Dragonflight is considered to be a step above Battle for Azeroth and Shadowlands in quality despite also struggling to maintain Twitch viewership.
Shroud was in the middle of a Wrath of the Lich King: Classic raid on the December 20 Twitch stream in which he sang about "getting loot in a game" that he loves in justifying his continued streaming of the game. Although Shroud stated that World of Warcraft has been killing his channel, it continues to maintain a strong following as the popular Twitch streamer has over 10 million followers that may simply not show up for the MMO content. According to his official statistics, Shroud is down to an average of 8,000 viewers for World of Warcraft compared to 14,000 which he could reach by playing FPS games like Overwatch 2 or Valorant.
Another Twitch stream saw Shroud complimenting Valorant as "not bad" while stating that it and other games don't quite stack up to the quality of World of Warcraft. Given that his Overwatch 2 content is also widely praised despite being what Shroud may consider as not bad, the millions of viewers that could be showing up may be tuning into other successful Twitch streamers like Asmongold, xQc, or Summit1g. Twitch Just Chatting is often among the top viewed categories of the Amazon platform for popular livestreamers, while some of the other current relevant games are League of Legends, Call of Duty: Warzone 2, Fortnite, and Minecraft.
Because Asmongold has been known to surpass 20,000 views for World of Warcraft streams in recent months, the Activision Blizzard MMO may have an audience that sticks to established names in the community rather than players that merely dabble. Given the success of eSports organizations like Team Liquid, Method, and Echo Esports in World of Warcraft, the race to world first and other timely Dragonflight events may continue to draw in views.
World of Warcraft is available now for Mac and PC.