Credit: Blizzard Entertainment
Movement in the middle of the top 10 this week was highlighted by surges in viewership for Hearthstone, Mortal Kombat 11, and World of Warcraft.
The following titles are ranked according to the total number of hours watched on Twitch 
, from Monday to the following Sunday, with data compiled using TEO Analytics.
Keep it Competitive
Hearthstone isn’t normally an esports-driven game on Twitch, but with the World Championship last week, the title saw a huge boost due to broadcasts of competition. While the official Hearthstone channel generated the most hours watched of any channel on Twitch, alternate-language streams also helped to generate viewership for Hearthstone.
The typical collection of top Hearthstone personality streamers still managed to make it into the top 10 channels for the game, but four of the online card games in top 10 spots were taken by alternate-language channels broadcasting the World Championship.
With the Taiwanese and Russian-language channels leading the way, the top alternate-language streams for the event (including French and Korean-language streams) provided 1.7M hours watched for Hearthstone on top of the 3.1M generated by the main broadcast.
Tier Talk
The World of Warcraft raid race at the end of January into February made Blizzard Entertainment’s massively multiplayer online game one of the biggest stories on Twitch early in the year, and this past week a new smaller raid race has helped to stimulate WoW.
Last week, Blizzard released a mini-raid consisting of two bosses. While the raid is significantly shorter and generates less hype than the normal raids that generally consist of 7-12 bosses, the movement by guilds to stream their raiding efforts has pushed WoW’s viewership.
Following the model of Method, which has streamed their world-first race during the last two raiding tiers, other guilds like Limit, who previously refrained from streaming, joined in on the broadcasting trend.
Finish Him!
NetherRealm Studios Mortal Kombat franchise had its latest title release last week, Mortal Kombat 11, and the resulting viewership on Twitch included airtime from a multitude of streamers who are known for playing a variety of games.
Maximilian “Maximilian Dood” Christiansen led the way in terms of hours watched with 651K over 35 hours streaming the fighting game, and he was followed by Saqib “Lirik” Zahid and Sebastian “Forsen” Fors, who recorded 536K and 433K hours watched, respectively.
The title had 1.6M hours watched on its release day, and viewership has declined since. However, as the title overtakes its predecessor, Mortal Kombat X, it can be expected that the game will see short-term surges in viewership during high-profile fighting game esports events like the Evolution Championship Series in the summer.
