Asmongold’s return gives World of Warcraft a boost on Twitch

Asmongold’s influence on World of Warcraft as a streamer might be stronger than any other individual content creator on any specific game.

When he decided to take a break from streaming at the end of last year, the quirky, dramatic streamer left a massive void in the WoW category on Twitch. So it’s little surprise that his return had an immediate impact.

On his first day back since Dec. 12, Asmongold’s stream yesterday averaged more than 56,000 viewers across six hours, according to Twitch statistics website SullyGnome. His hours watched total of more than 358,000, according to escharts.com, was enough to make him the second most-watched streaming personality on Twitch for the day behind only Pestily.

While his average viewership was impressive relative to other channels on Twitch, his return wasn’t even one of his best statistical streams in the past year. Over the past 365 days, Asmongold has streamed 184 times and he’s recorded stronger average viewership 19 times, primarily surrounding his WoW Classic streams following the game’s release in the fall.

Where Asmon is perhaps making his biggest impact is in the WoW directory on Twitch, though. Prior to his return, WoW was missing a strong personality who could attract the masses. Many of the top WoW streamers in the past month are notable professional competitive players.

But in just a day, Asmon has been able to shake up the directory, posting more hours watched in one day than all but three WoW channels have for the past 30 days. Only Payo, Method’s official 24/7 channel, and Towelliee have more hours watched in the past 30 days than Asmon posted yesterday alone.

For many other games, like Fortnite or League of Legends, top personalities like Tyler1 or Tfue certainly have some impact on the game’s success. But for WoW, the Asmon effect is on another level. With Asmon’s first stream yesterday, WoW eclipsed 100,000 concurrent viewers for the first time since Feb. 12 surrounding the mythic Ny’alotha Race to World First.

Excluding RWF viewership, the WoW directory on Twitch hadn’t seen more than 100 concurrent viewers since before Asmongold started his hiatus.

While Asmongold’s ability to draw more than 50,000 viewers on average might not be sustainable long term without any new patches in WoW, the looming potential for an alpha or beta coming for the next expansion, Shadowlands, could help his channel flourish as many fans wait for more content.