Method is at the heart of it
World of Warcraft has overshadowed Destiny 2 and FFXIV as my most-played “free time” game at the moment. Despite the qualms some players have with the recent Battle for Azeroth expansion I’m having a great time experiencing the six new zones and creating new allied races. As it turns out a lot of other folks are too.
According to numbers from gamoloco, World of Warcraft has been “rejuvenated,” in terms of streaming numbers, hitting a peak of 50 million hours watched: the fifth game to hit this record. There’s a lot of reasons for this. The whole “Horde vs. Alliance” angle is going to get a lot of lapsed players back, or perhaps even bring people in who enjoyed the RTS Warcraft series. But the chief reason for the climb? Method.
As we reported several weeks ago World of Warcraft launched its Uldir raid, and the entire world first race for its Mythic difficulty was streamed and tracked by the raiding group Method: often referred to as the most skilled collective of WoW players in the world. In a move that’s not done often in the MMO-sphere (if ever) they actually streamed their progress for the world first race.
If you’re confused as to why that’s a big deal: big-time raiding groups don’t like streaming because they don’t want other teams to steal information or secrets to win the race. Method not only didn’t care, they won. The kicker is that their stream had commentary, offering an unprecedented look at MMO raiding.
With all of the positive changes coming in 8.1 (and two new allied races) things are looking pretty good for World of Warcraft — so long as the new Siege of Zuldazar raid can keep up.
World of Warcraft [Gamoloco]
