Asmongold shows signs of burnout despite being one of Twitch’s most-watched streamers

Asmongold might be the most-watched streamer on Twitch since the release of World of Warcraft Classic, but in a Twitter video yesterday, he expressed some concerns regarding burnout.

While many people talk about burnout in the context of fatigue from playing a specific video game too much, Asmongold instead was referring to exhaust from streaming.

“I’ve been an asshole recently,” he said at the beginning of the video. “I don’t really know exactly how it happened.”

With an average of 49,407 viewers since Classic’s release at the end of August and 649 hours streamed, Asmongold has been the most-watched—and oftentimes most-criticized—WoW gamer on Twitch. While that viewership has been lucrative for Asmongold in terms of subscription and followership growth, it’s also been taxing on his psyche. And now, the streamer is claiming that he’s been “running on empty for a while.”

“I have to defend the way I play the game, my raids, my guild,” Asmongold said. “You just spend the whole time getting attacked like that, and reflectively you’re defensive. Whether that’s my fault or somebody else’s fault, it doesn’t really matter… it’s either entertaining and fun or it’s not, and I think a lot of that stuff has made it not so I apologize for that.”

Despite being considered one of Twitch’s more charismatic personalities, Asmongold admitted that he considers himself to be a fairly solitary person who enjoys having a plethora of time to himself. The pressures of streaming, however, have taken a lot of that personal time away from him.

Additionally, the social dynamics of Classic as an MMO that are prone to causing interpersonal drama seem to have worn on Asmongold. At first, he said the interpersonal drama that manifested throughout Faerlina, the Classic server most populated by Twitch streamers, was “funny.” But more than three months after the game’s release, Asmongold believes it’s all “played out.”

“It’s boring,” Asmongold said. “I’m tired of it. It’s exhausting, and the thing mostly about it, and I’m at fault for this too, is that… everybody, myself included, just takes it all way too seriously. At the end of the day it’s just a game, and we’re all just trying to play and have fun.”

Asmongold hasn’t streamed since Dec. 4, but he plans to return to his stream early in the week to continue playing Classic. Additionally, he said he knows his audience is divided between viewers who want to see Classic and those who would prefer to watch him play the retail version of WoW. He admitted that he’s struggling to find a balance between those two games.

This isn’t the first time Asmongold has expressed the need to take time away from streaming, nor is he the only influencer to show signs of streaming burnout. Earlier this year, Asmongold took a hiatus from streaming from the end of February through the middle of April. In September, Turner “Tfue” Tenney took a break from streaming for a few weeks that left a gaping hole Fortnite’s viewership on Twitch. 

Asmongold’s comments come just days before Blizzard is set to release player-vs-player battlegrounds in Classic, which will give influencers a fresh form of content to stream.