It was an insane night for Overwatch developer Blizzard. The release of World of Warcraft (WoW) Classic, the original version of the wildly successful MMO, broke the concurrent viewership record for a single event on Twitch.

 

The new-old game, which launched yesterday afternoon, broke the 1.1 million concurrent viewer mark set by the Boston Major for CS:GO last year, and instantly shot to the top of the Twitch charts.

 

The biggest name in WoW streaming, Asmongold, took major advantage of the event with a launch stream to celebrate, hitting almost 300 thousand concurrent viewers alone on stream.

 

Other top streamers, including Shroud and TimTheTatman, also joined in on the launch, helping push the numbers even higher.

Return to MMOs?

 

While many longtime MMO fans have been quick to push this narrative, others have questioned whether the hype will last, or if nostalgia will eventually fade, causing players to leave the game in droves.

 

These folks point to the continued struggle of MMOs such as Terra and Wildstar, also noting that the of the three biggest MMO titles on the market (Runescape, WoW, Final Fantasy XIV). Only one of them is younger than 15-years old, and even then Final Fantasy is still closing in on a decade of play.

WoW Esports Push

While the debate over whether or not MMOs will see a resurgence drags on, another community in WoW has been pondering whether they’ll see a push from Blizzard to help them grow soon: the competitive WoW scene.

 

The company’s recent push into esports, along with the spike in WoW’s popularity, has some competitive players hoping Blizzard will give the game mode the attention it needs to make it big.

 

We’ll see how that shakes up over the next year or so. We can say without a doubt that WoW Classic is going to be a game-changer.