The World of Warcraft Race to World First, Ny’alotha, once again helped the game jump to the upper echelon of top content on Twitch in terms of hours watched.
Over the past two weeks, the game’s 14.3 million and 12 million hours watched were enough to make it the third and fourth most-watched content on Twitch, according to Stream Hatchet. The only game that’s had more hours watched on Twitch over the two week span was League of Legends, which recently had the LCS and LEC Spring Splits start back up.
Overall, WoW had just less than 24 million hours watched between Jan. 28, when the race started, through Feb. 8, after Complexity Limit and Method had both killed all of the bosses in the raid.
The figures are an increase from the last raiding tier, Eternal Palace, which began on July 16. Both Limit and Method killed that raid’s final boss by July 28. During that time frame, WoW racked up 22.5 million hours watched.
The increase in hours watched for the Race to World First came despite the race lasting fewer days. This tier, Limit became the first guild to achieve Cutting Edge a few days before Method. Last tier, each guild managed to get the achievement within 24 hours of one another.
One element of this raiding tier’s success on Twitch could be its historical nature. Limit’s victory made it the first North American guild to win a Race to World First since Blizzard implemented the “mythic” difficulty.
The feat is further dramatized by Limit’s consistent second-place performances throughout the latest WoW expansion that began in the fall of 2018. Prior to this raid, Method had won every main raiding tier’s Race to World First in the expansion.
Despite coming in second place, Method’s RWF coverage outperformed that of Limit with 12.4 million hours watched, according to research done by Stream Hatchet. That coverage includes Method’s main channel as well as a combination of all of Method’s personal perspective streams that included players like Sco, Gingi, and Fragnance.
Limit’s RWF, which had significantly fewer streams involved and ended days before Method’s, had 5.5 million hours watched. While Complexity’s main stream recorded 1.85 million hours watched, a majority of Limit’s RWF viewership went to the channel of Limit’s GM, Maximum.
Max streamed himself leading Limit’s raid as a non-player, watching from a teammate’s point of view, and included the team’s communications, something no Method streamer or channel did.
Max’s 3.3 million hours watched significantly outperformed the audience of any individual streamer and his peak of more than 120,000 viewers at the time Limit won the race wasn’t even close to being matched. Method’s main channel had the second highest peak among RWF channels with just under 82,000 viewers.
While Method managed to generate more viewership for its Race to World First coverage overall, the guild came into the race with more experience streaming, having done it beginning with the Uldir race in the fall of 2018. This is only Limit’s second time broadcasting. In the most recent RWF in July, the guild streamed for the first time in a partnership with Red Bull.
The combination of Method’s previous monopoly on RWF streaming and the guild’s consistent success as the top raiding guild in the world throughout this WoW expansion gave them a leg up on Limit by reputation alone.
But now that Limit has proven that it can win a Race to World First and do so decisively, fans might expect that the RWF’s viewership growth on Twitch could shift slightly in favor of Limit.
With the guild growing as a business entity under the Complexity umbrella and beginning to hone in on some of the logistical challenges associated with broadcasting a RWF, the guild has the potential to use that experience and success to attract more sponsors and viewers when the next expansion and raid tier releases later this year.
