World of Warcraft is one of the most famous games in the world, even being the focus of an entire South Park episode in 2006. It’s eSports scene is relatively young, and has been growing year on year. Read our overview and betting guide below to get in on the action.
World of Warcraft is arguably the most popular Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game (MMORPG) the world has ever seen. Developed by Blizzard (now Activision-Blizzard) and released in 2004, World of Warcraft had up to 12 million players at its peak popularity and became a cultural phenomenon.
Oddly enough, however, while World of Warcraft’s eSports scene kicked off in 2009, it only exploded in popularity from around 2016. It’s a vibrant and growing eSports scene, and the World of Warcraft eSports betting scene is going from strength to strength.
World of Warcraft is set in the fantasy world of Azeroth, and players take on the role of a fictional hero who is allied to one of two factions. The Alliance and Horde factions are considered to be polar opposites, and have been engaged in war since the first day World of Warcraft’s servers went live. Alliance are typically seen as the lawful, organised, “good” faction, while Horde is seen as the chaotic, violent, “evil” faction, though in reality they’re both just groups of people who behave much in the same way.
Players need to choose a race and class for their character, offering a number of different combinations and development paths. There are 21 different races, ranging from standard humans, to your predictable high-fantasy elves, to a race of anthropomorphic Pandas. There are 12 character classes to choose from, each having a few different specialisation paths. World of Warcraft allows players to create characters to fit any of hundreds of different play styles or role playing experiences.
Players use their characters to explore different locations, fight monsters, take on quests, form online guilds, gather materials, craft items and equipment. It’s possible to most of this entirely by yourself, but the vast majority of players work together to take down raid bosses, help each other, and collaborate. This type of gameplay is called Player Versus Environment, or PVE.
As we said above, Alliance and Horde are two factions at war. This where Player Versus Player (PVP) gameplay comes in. There are PVP areas where large groups of players can wage war against each other. Where eSports is concerned, though, is the Arena system.
The Arena is a PVP area which puts player in specifically controlled environments to battle each other in a tournament format. These battles can be 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, or 5v5, and winners boost their team rating and earn Arena points.
World of Warcraft is not a new game, let’s get that out of the way. The game came out in 2004, though has had 6 expansions since then (the most recent of which came out in 2018). The game doesn’t, in all honesty, look like a game from 2004, but it also certainly doesn’t look like more recent releases such as Spiderman or The Witcher 3.
World of Warcraft is bright, colorful, and the player interface provides all the information one could hope for. The user interface puts everything at our fingertips, allowing players to react quickly and change up their battle plans or strategies on the fly.
The bright color-scheme lends a freshness to the aesthetics that make it easy to look at for hours on end.
Asmongold isn’t a competitive pro, but is Twitch’s number 1 World of Warcraft streamer at the time of writing. He has been playing world of Warcraft since 2006, and has been a full time streamer since 2016.
Sodapoppin has been streaming his World of Warcraft plays since 2008, initially streaming on Xfire before moving on to Twitch. He co owned the Canadian eSports organization, Northen Gaming.
Summit1G is an ex Counter Strike: Global Offensive player who has spent much of his recent time playing World of Warcraft. He has been a professional gamer since he was a teenager, and he’s considered to be Twitch royalty.
Most World of Warcraft betting mainly focuses on the PVP (player versus player) aspect of the game, and specifically the Arena, as it’s an area of the game that’s organised in a more traditional tournament form.
PVP play in World of Warcraft had been relatively underdeveloped until a few years ago, when expansions to the game started to flesh it out more. This has enabled a passionate and growing eSports community to form around it.
Bettors usually place wagers on a tournament outcomes, match outcomes, round outcomes, and a limited number of betting markets such as round duration, and first to land a hit.
As we said above, players choose between 21 races and 12 classes when creating their characters, and each class can develop in a few different directions as they level up, so Arena battles tend to be really varied.
While some classes have abilities clearly designed to counter other specific classes’ abilities, this level of predictability is only really useful to bettors in 1v1 battles. For example, a Pandaren monk going up against a Blood Elf warlock is likely to win at least 75% of the time, just because of the ways that classes work.
However, when it comes to 2v2, 3v3, and 5v5 battles, that predictability generally ends up being thrown out the window. Different class abilities can end up having vastly different effects when combined with others.
For example: A spell that slows enemy movement in a circular area may not seem all that useful when they can use ranged attacks against you, but if you have teammates that can spam AoE (area of effect) attacks, that slowing spell could be your key to victory through controlling enemy positioning.
The vast majority of pro and premier league tournaments usually follow the 3v3 format, meaning PVP live World of Warcraft betting can get very exciting.
PVE (player versus environment) live World of Warcraft betting is a much newer concept, but is being introduced by more and more sportsbooks. It offers up a distinctly different experience than PVP live World of Warcraft betting does, which makes World of Warcraft eSports betting unique.
PVE live World of Warcraft betting generally focuses on cooperation between players when facing off against AI-controlled hordes and gigantic, monstrous horrors. PVE live World of Warcraft betting is very different to most eSports betting, as it isn’t a human-versus-human experience.
The types of bets differ here too, with bets consisting of things like “first team to take down the dungeon boss,” “team with the highest percentage of HP healed,” or “team with lowest death count” being common bets.
Here are the operators we’d recommend taking a look at who offer live World of Warcraft betting:
Betway: Betway support live World of Warcraft betting, and as a more traditional sportsbook, have a great welcome offer and run a number of regular promotions. Betway support a vast array of payment and withdrawal methods, and have fantastic customer support. They don’t offer live stream feeds on their website, but that’s a small compromise in the face of their other features.
Unikrn: Unikrn is one of the most unique operators we’ve reviewed. They have sportsbook betting, and certainly offer live World of Warcraft betting (including embedded live stream). Unikrn also offer a number of other, unique products on their website, such as betting on non-tournament Twitch streams, and virtual eSport betting.
Live World of Warcraft betting is an entirely unique experience, even in the eSports betting scene. More and more operators run live World of Warcraft betting every month, the game has been experiencing a resurgence on Twitch, and we recommend jumping on the hype train.