The release of WoW Classic ushered the meteoric rise for Twitch streamer ‘JokerdTV’, but who is this new streaming phenomenon, and why has he become so popular?
Jokerd is a 22-year-old Twitch streamer from Malta, who has been on the platform since 2013, but didn’t start streaming until early 2019.
In the months prior to the release of WoW Classic on August 26, Jokerd was averaging around 200 viewers, according to data from Twitchmetrics – a healthy number, but nothing extraordinary.
Jokerd becomes Twitch famous
But, during WoW Classic’s Beta and subsequent release at the tail-end of August, Jokerd was seeing his 8+ hours back-to-back streams really pay off, as his viewership was steadily rising to audiences of 700 or more.
His big turnaround moment though, was when he became the first WoW Classic player to reach the max level of 60, beating out many others trying to achieve the same feat.
As the WoW hype took over Twitch and drew in millions of viewers, everyone saw how long the grind was to progress after level 20, even for hardcore players like Chance ‘Sodapoppin’ Morris, shroud, and more, who are still yet to hit max level at the time of writing.
- Read more: How to make gold in WoW Classic
But JokerdTV managed to hit that mark within the first week of the game’s release, with three days and seven hours of game time logged on his gnome mage.
The 22-year-old Malta resident’s views, follows and Twitch subs skyrocketed from there, following the end of his mage’s journey in his 18-hour stream on August 30. For the week of August 29 – September 4, he was the fastest-growing channel on Twitch with over 129,000 new followers.
While over 314,000 people tuned into his stream to share in the momentous occasion, and the incredible parade through Azeroth afterward, a lot of those viewers stayed after getting to know the streamer a bit better.
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The self-proclaimed “caveman” revealed his room to his stream, showing walls lined with stones that he says “forced him to get (level) 60” since the prison-esque decor gives him no distractions and lets him grind for hours on end.
Taking WoW stream to the next level
Jokerd had typically broadcasted without a face-cam during his WoW campaigns. But now that he’s catering to a stream with roughly 8k viewers since his level 60 accomplishment, he revealed his glorious mug for all to see.
Along with being a hilarious personality that a lot of people love to watch, he is a WoW diehard through and through. Since his Twitch stardom, he’s been playing the game with notable personalities such as NymN, erobb, Kandyland and more.
In fact, in a September 2 stream, he said that “going on a WoW date with a girl is more exciting that taking her to the movies.”
Moreover, the 5-foot-9 (about 80 cm) streamer said that before WoW Classic’s release he weighed about 73 kgs (roughly 160 pounds) but has since dropped in at 69 kgs (about 152 pounds).
Jokerd managed to out level a ton of players to hit level 60 first, and that passionate commitment has made him one of the most interesting rising stars on the Twitch platform.
The real test is whether he can turn this short-term growth into a long-term viewer base, who will continue to watch his channel, even after the hype of being level 60 first, and WoW Classic in general, has died down.