shroud explains MMO viewership for World or Warcraft, New World

Many top Twitch streamers have been turning to MMOs such as World of Warcraft, New World, and Final Fantasy XIV Online. This includes Michael “shroud” Grzesiek, who is primarily known for his Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Valorant prowess.

While shroud used to be a CSGO pro, he has more recently been enjoying World of Warcraft and New World while streaming. On Twitch, shroud has put over 2,600 hours into streaming PUBG in recent months. But he has also put in 639 hours into World of Warcraft: Shadowlands and 421 hours into New Worlds.

Statistics show that these two MMOs have given shroud the least views out of his main rotation of games. When playing Valorant, shroud gets an average viewership of over 46,000. While playing World of Warcraft, shroud gets around 18,500. The viewership average of New World is 39,000, but that includes an influx of viewers when the game was first released.

shroud explains why MMOs have lower viewership than FPS games

shroud isn’t too worried about the viewership going down while he plays MMO games.

“Low views on a game doesn’t mean the game is bad. It just means people would rather play it than watch, you know? It’s like any MMO. Who the f–k wants to watch an MMO?” shroud said.

shroud added that players can’t do anything “exceptional” in an MMO. shroud basically explained that MMOs are easy, so there’s less room for the sort of high-level skill expression viewers expect when shroud plays CSGO or Valorant.

Try telling this to Asmongold. Asmongold is a big streamer on Twitch that got his start playing World of Warcraft. He gets 25,000 average viewers while playing WoW and has seen even higher viewership while breaking into Final Fantasy 14. But few streamers beyond Asmongold have had such success with the MMORPG genre.

shroud didn’t get his start as an MMO streamer either, making his switch over a bit different for his audience to get accustomed to. Despite this, shroud has still been getting solid views while switching to different games in recent months. He’s currently in the top 20 English Twitch channels.