World of Warcraft: Forever isn't out yet, but it's already clear it has a major problem. It isn't anything in the game itself. It's not the addition of Skyborne elves that require players to pay $30, or controversial class changes like Warrior's Rage normalization. The WoW Classic community is a passionate bunch, and so there's a huge variety of strong opinions on everything related to the latest version of developer Blizzard's old-school MMORPG. That's all par for the course. Instead, it's a problem that's largely out of the community's control: streamers.
Streamers have been a big part of WoW since Twitch's earliest days. The release of WoW Classic back in 2019 in particular was a watershed moment, with 1.1 million concurrent viewers and 55 million hours watched during launch week. WoW: Forever's beta isn't quite hitting those numbers so far, but considering it's not even officially out yet, interest and viewership is high. The game has a strong streamer community, and they've taken to hitting Forever's beta extremely hard, pushing it to its limits. Blizzard employees have commented multiple times that Forever's beta is breaking records.
Having streamers and their communities do such robust beta testing on Forever is great, ensuring the game's full launch on November 4 will be smoother for everyone involved. Unfortunately, it hasn't taken long for the negative costs of the game's popularity with streamers to become obvious.
Some streamers are already using their large communities in the Forever beta to gain an advantage over average players, whether it's members of their community donating materials so they can speedrun professions or straight-up gifting them huge amounts of gold. A streamer even went so far to promote illegal gold buying live on stream, encouraging their community to "swipe their credit card" so that they could in turn profit. Another streamer is building an in-game community so large that many worry it will swallow one server in particular whole, with no good alternatives for those who want to avoid the situation. Both are major problems for Forever and the community Blizzard is trying to build.
Streamers And RMT
One need only look at Forever's recent real-money transaction (RMT) controversies to see what I'm talking about. While broadcasting live, the streamer Ziqo was recently seen accepting large sums of gold that were almost certainly not acquired the old-fashioned way, causing an uproar in the community over how something so blatant could go unpunished. Another streamer, Payo, promoted gold buying on stream to his community.
The two streamers were clearly benefiting from gold buying (even if they weren't the ones buying it directly) in the lead-up to an upcoming WoW: Forever beta PvP tournament with a $100,000 prize pool. The tournament itself is organized by popular WoW streamers Xaryu, Esfand, and Tips Out, and many streamers within the game's community will be participating. While anyone can technically join, it quickly became clear that streamers, many of whom treat the game as a full-time job and can have their communities farm gold and items on their behalf, have a huge advantage. That advantage is made even more explicit when prominent streamers are seen accepting huge sums of gold that likely came from illicit sources.
Gold buying in WoW, and in numerous other MMOs, isn't new. It's been an ongoing issue since WoW first launched, with Blizzard engaged in a constant war against gold-farming bots. Historically, Blizzard looked to punish the bot accounts farming and selling the gold more than those actually buying it. Unfortunately, it seems like gold buying has only gotten more popular, and more accepted, in the last two decades.
How we play WoW in 2026 (or even in 2019) is vastly different than how we played in 2004. Back then, most players barely knew what they were doing. The game wasn't "solved." Now, players know everything there is to know about how WoW works, and many are focused on min-maxing, following the meta, getting a good "parse" in raid, and gaining every advantage they can. To some, that means illegally buying gold, which can then in turn be used to buy expensive consumables, rare items, and more. Gold is extremely valuable in WoW Classic because it's scarce and time-consuming to earn. To some competitive players, that makes gold buying not just a convenience, but a necessity.
To Blizzard's credit, it's attempting to take a more hardline stance on the issue in Forever than in the past. Blizzard removed Ziqo's gold and banned Payo's main account, though he wasn't banned permanently and is now playing and streaming from a different one.
In forum posts, Blizzard has said anyone engaging with RMT, even those merely accepting trades for suspicious amounts of gold that potentially might have been purchased by someone else, will be cause for action, including removal of said gold, account suspensions, and bans. Blizzard is even going so far as to add an in-game RMT warning when trading with strangers in an effort to combat the practice. It also announced accounts suspected of engaging with illegal gold will be subject to a "Temporary Economy Hold." Accounts with this new restriction will be unable to trade, use the mailbox, banks, or auction house until the hold is lifted pending an investigation from Blizzard. This is a major escalation on Blizzard's part.
In his apology video, where he said he was sorry and should not have promoted gold buying, Payo still said it was "100% true" that "everyone will be buying gold in the tournament." The need to be competitive seems to have almost demanded that be the case. The fact that Forever's first major community event--organized by and largely for streamers--is one where it's simply accepted that illegal gold buying will be commonplace, is wildly depressing.
Rather than lead by example, some WoW's streamers are instead adopting an "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" attitude. The corrosive effect this has on the game can't be understated. If Blizzard wants to maintain Forever's integrity and preserve it for years to come, it needs to crack down on those taking advantage of RMT, including streamers, harder than it ever has before. Blizzard's actions so far are a major step in the right direction, but continued pressure is needed keep RMT locked away for good.
The Asmongold Issue
RMT is just one part of Forever's streamer problem. The other is the cult of personality that follows particular streamers, and the disruptive effect they have on everyone else that isn't a part of their community.
I'm, of course, talking about Zack Hoyt, better known as Asmongold. For years he was WoW's biggest streamer, but in more recent times has largely quit the game in favor of political and right-wing reactionary content. Earlier this year, he was suspended from Twitch for saying he thinks children crossing the US border illegally should be shot. In 2024, he was suspended for racist comments made about Palestinians. He currently has 3.5 million followers on his main Twitch account and 4.7 million subscribers on YouTube.
Unfortunately, he's made Forever's beta his ballyhooed return to Blizzard's MMO, and has done so in the most obnoxious way possible. Enter Olympus, Asmongold's Alliance guild that, according to more recent streams, boasts nearly 74,000 members on Forever's PvP server. In Asmongold's own words, his personal "swarm of locusts" is almost impossible to ignore. They are everywhere and seek to control and consume everything. A recent video uploaded to Asmongold's YouTube channel proudly declares, "The entire server is ours now" and, "Blizzard can't stop us anymore." Anoter states "World of Warcraft wasn't built for this."
There have been big guilds in WoW before, but never on this scale. To put in perspective just how gigantic 74,000 players is, WoW Classic's servers in 2019 held a max of around 10-12,000 players, triple the capacity of servers back in 2004 when WoW originally launched. Olympus is the size of six or more entire WoW Classic servers and growing, and is bigger than the entire daily concurrent player populations of many live-service games. Keep in mind that this is all in the beta, which players have to pay $60 for the privilege to access. While Olympus could shrink or die out by the time of Forever's full launch, it might also get bigger. Whether the guild will last long term is debatable, but in the meantime, it's almost certainly going to be a major headache.
At its current size, Olympus could potentially dominate the server's economy and raiding scene on the Alliance side. Merely trying to play the game normally in an area where thousands of Olympus members are congregating will be a struggle in and of itself. And if you're playing Horde, well, good luck. While there are server "layers" that prevent every player on the server from being in the same version of the world to prevent overcrowding and performance issues, with numbers like Olympus has, simply jumping to another layer isn't going to be enough.
A streamer dominating a particular server hasn't been an issue in the past. That's because various versions of WoW and WoW Classic have always had numerous different servers to choose from, with multiple options for PvP, PvE, and role-playing. Once it became clear what servers streamers and their communities would be playing on, you could just pick a different server to avoid them. The streamers and their communities got to have their fun, and average players got to enjoy the game normally by not having to interact with them (provided they knew to research this in advance).
That's not the case in Forever. Instead of traditional servers, Blizzard instead has opted for what it calls a "realmless" approach, essentially one massive server for each of Forever's three different rulesets. There is one PvE server, where players on opposing factions must opt in to battle each other out in the open world. There is one PvP server, where players can openly wage war in contested territory. And there is one PvE role-playing server.
If you want to play on the PvP server but don't want to have to interact with Asmongold and his guild, you are out of luck. Whether you are Alliance or Horde, you will be seeing, interacting with, buying from, or getting killed by Olympus members. Given Asmongold's various controversies and ideology, it's not exactly surprising a lot of players want nothing to do with him or his community.
With no other PvP servers to flee to (why is there no RPPvP option?), average players looking to avoid Asmongold are stuck. Even if Olympus pivots to a PvE server for the game's launch, many of the same issues still stand.
One player has made an add-on called OlympusMute that automatically hides chat messages from anyone with Olympus in their guild name. The add-on can be downloaded for free from CurseForge and set up to automatically decline guild, group, and trade invites from Olympus members. So far, OlympusMute has been downloaded over 66,000 times. It's a Band-Aid solution for having to constantly see spam from Olympus members but doesn't fix the underlying illness--Olympus will have a huge influence on whatever server it chooses, with few alternatives for average players looking to avoid it.
That is the real root of the problem. Asmongold is merely the symptom. The fact that players who want to play on a specific server have to endure not only Asmongold and his entire community but also other streamers in general is a failure on Blizzard's part.
Streamers can bring excitement to WoW's world, and many streamers add, rather than detract, from the experience. That is the beauty of an MMO, after all. Communities and rivalries form that become part of the game's world and the experience, and streamers are often great at facilitating the kinds of experiences that can really only happen in an MMO. Joining the PvP server and throwing in with Horde streamers in an all-out war against Olympus could end up being some of the best WoW content ever created.
I have my own list of streamers I follow who I think are fantastic and important parts of the community. But choosing to play on a streamer server should be just that: a choice. By offering so few choices, Blizzard is forcing players to have an experience they aren't seeking.
There are no easy fixes to these problems. Streamers are in many ways the public face of WoW, and a hype machine outside of Blizzard's direct control. I think that's ultimately a good thing, but when streamers are ruining the experiences of average players, whether it's abusing their status to take advantage of RMT or threatening to monopolize an entire server, something needs to be done. With WoW: Forever's launch less than a month away, I don't think that's too much to ask.