The Success of World of Warcraft: Dragonflight and its Twitch Community

World of Warcraft peaked as the most viewed game on Twitch on release date Monday, and has held rank 2 or 3 since then. WoW has also doubled its total viewership.

What exactly drew everyone’s eyes to the World of Warcraft category in the month of November? Two huge factors:

1. WoW’s newest retail expansion release, Dragonflight

2. Blizzard’s first ever Twitch Drops for the game!

World of Warcraft has 45.4 million viewer hours in the month of November, with over 30 million of those hours being since the 15th when the first Twitch Drop went live. The launch of Dragonflight alone netted 13.8 million of those viewer hours.

Twitch Drops are the New Meta

Twitch Drops have been huge for many games, content creators and the streaming community in general. Viewers get cool in-game cosmetics or gear for watching streams, streamers get increased viewership, and games get more exposure. World of Warcraft however has previously never participated in Twitch Drops.

For the launch of the new Dragonflight expansion they held three separate rounds of Twitch drops, and even went all-in with a “Support a Streamer” program where sub gifters received in-game cosmetic pets.

With a LOT more focus on their community’s content creators and pushing viewership to Twitch, how do their numbers over the last 30 days hold up?

Viewership Data and Comparisons

World of Warcraft peaked as the most viewed game on Twitch on release date Monday, and has held rank 2 or 3 since then. WoW has also doubled its total viewership.

It speaks to the power of legacy WoW streamers, who got their start before Twitch even existed – these loyal streamers and communities instantly skyrocket WoW to the Top 5 Games on Twitch!

Average Consecutive Viewers - 169k

Peak Viewers - 767,945

Average Streams - 2.7k

Peak Streams - 11,960

Total Hours Watched - 20.5 million

Peak Rank on Twitch - 1

This data tracks Dragonflight’s success since its launch 5 days ago on Monday, Nov 28.

Previously during the release of WoW Classic: Wrath of the Lich King, WoW hit over 366,000 average viewers. This time Dragonflight hit nearly 768,000 average viewers – twice its previous audience, and on a Monday!

Dragonflight Expansion hype kept strong by Twitch community

Even before the expansion, WoW maintained high average consecutive viewership, staying within the top 5 despite big November releases like Modern Warfare II, God of War Ragnarok, and Pokemon Scarlet & Violet.

To see how the expansion release made a difference with Twitch Drops and the “Support A Streamer” program, let’s take a look at the data from the first round of Drops on November 15.

Twitch Drops massively skyrocketed WoW’s peak viewership to 550,000 for the week of November 15th. The combination of Twitch campaigns into a highly-anticipated launch creates a knockout punch that blows everyone’s expectations out of the water.

The developers have also been more involved in the community than ever before and extremely good at listening to feedback.

Leading into the competitive season

These numbers are something we will be revisiting as the final round of Twitch Drops go live - when the Race to World First and competitive PvP seasons go live.

Previously WoW content was community-fueled, so it’s exciting to see what direct involvement with developers will bring to the game. Overall the investment from the World of Warcraft team into the streamers and their community is paying off, and the numbers on Twitch absolutely show it.