This week has been momentous in the World of Warcraft gaming sphere. For the first time in WoW history, the reigning champion raiding guild in the world announced that they would be streaming their raid progress of Mythic Uldir live on Twitch. With the release of the Mythic difficulty of Uldir this past Tuesday, players from all over the world have been racing to be the world’s first guild to defeat all 8 of the newest end-game bosses. Method gaming’s top WoW streamer and co-founder, Scott “Sco” McMillan, shared that he has received over 20,000 new paid subscriptions to his Twitch channel from streaming raid progression just since the launch of Mythic Uldir on Tuesday, which marks a minimum of $100,000 income simply in new subscriptions to his channel alone, not counting all of the donations and higher tier subscriptions he has received in addition over the last few days.
Do these numbers seem completely unfathomable? Let me explain why Method’s decision to stream raid progress live changes everything.
World of Warcraft’s raiding scene has been the bread and butter of PvE competition since the beginning of the game back in 2004. Large numbers of people have tried to quit the game and play some of the newer MMORPG’s to hit the market over the last decade, but almost everyone seems to migrate back to WoW because no other game has ever been able to compete wit
h the popularity and competition of WoW’s raids. WoW was the first MMORPG where people were able to coordinate with one another in large teams of 20+ people to defeat challenging bosses, so it quickly rose to popularity through parodies such as in South Park’s famous episode called “Make Love, Not Warcraft” where all the main characters get addicted to WoW, hole up in their basement, and work tirelessly together to defeat the ultimate foe.
Ever since WoW launched in 2004, its raiding scene has been competitive because it is oriented around each team’s secret strategies to kill each end-game boss in addition to skill and the personal responsibility of min-maxing one’s own character. Raiding is a marathon, but it is still a race. Guilds compete to get server-first titles, region-first titles (North America, Europe, Asia, Oceania), and the ultimate world-first title if they are the quickest guild to kill all the newest raid bosses that are released each tier. However, despite its popularity, raiding has never offered the spotlight in Blizzard Esports, so it has always been a competition with no monetary gain that only die-hard WoW players really understand.
With the explosion of the livestreaming industry for gaming, there are now streamers who reach tremendous viewership in the World of Warcraft section if they are showing progress on the most competitive content in the game, such as Mythic Plus Dungeons or PvP arena tournaments. However, the most hardcore raiders in WoW have traditionally kept away from livestreaming their raid progress, since this could give away their secret strats and allow other guilds to catch up to them and even pass them. For the last several years, the European team called “Method” have beaten millions of WoW players to the “World First” title in nearly every consecutive raid tier, but they have always had a strict no-streaming policy.
On September 6th, 2018, Method shocked fans by announcing on their official website that they had chosen to stream the entirety of their Mythic Uldir raid progress live on Twitch for the very first time. Since then, Method fans from all over the world have been tuning in to watch the world best guild race to the finish line, playing upwards of 20 hours a day from a professional LAN studio with computers set up for some of the most integral players on the team. The viewership across all Method players’ streams has reached somewhere above 60,000 viewers at a time, which is almost as much as the recent Esports tournament called the Mythic Dungeon Invitational hosted by World of Warcraft’s company Blizzard Entertainment itself. Method’s decision to stream their progress live has opened the door of possibilities to people who have been looking to make a career out of professional gaming but were left out of Esports until now.
While they are now currently in 2nd place in the running, Method has made history and a ton of money in the last few days by being brave enough to show the world their raid progress broadcast live. WoW may be an old game, but its future has never looked brighter.
Good luck to Method Gaming and all the other guilds racing to world first! May the best team win eternal glory.
VITAMINPEE 