Grand Theft Auto. Minecraft. Red Dead Redemption 2. Roblox. They’re all video games, but they are wildly different from one another. Two (GTA and RDR2) are insanely detailed, immersive sims that bring players into open-world settings with cinematic story campaigns. One (Minecraft) is also open-world, but it’s a sandbox, where players make everything from the ground up. And finally Roblox is a full-on games creation platform, where users (and brands) have made thousands of different worlds and experiences for fellow players to visit.
So, what do they all have in common?
Roleplay.
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These games—and dozens of others—allow players to create their own characters and storylines. And content creators have used those capabilities to put together collaborative worlds where their stories interweave with one another’s. It’s similar to tabletop roleplay game Dungeons & Dragons, but without the math: Creators make a character, come up with a background for them, and play them in the game, reacting to things as their character would.
Dream SMP, taking place in Minecraft, is possibly the most well-known example of creator roleplay. Its members together built a story that drew thousands upon thousands of fans, inspiring artwork and fanfiction of their characters and helping keep the game popular across Twitch and YouTube.
Now, the same thing is happening in World of Warcraft.
As Rolling Stone writes, WoW has seen a resurgence on Twitch lately–and a large portion of that traffic is thanks to OnlyFangs, a streamer guild led by Sodapoppin. The guild is fully in-character, meaning that once a streamer comes in and makes their character, they’re expected to roleplay the whole time they’re logged in to the game, interacting with their fellow guildies/streamers.
OnlyFangs’ second “season” of roleplay started this past November with over 100 streamers, including PirateSoftware, Shroud, and Sykkuno. Many of the involved streamers are new to WoW—and are being thrown in to the deep end, since part of this season’s appeal is that it’s played on a Hardcore server, where dying once in game means the character is permanently dead and the player loses all their items.
As Rolling Stone points out, with so many streamers involved and broadcasting for hours each day, numerous narratives have emerged among creators’ characters. Some have become friends; others, mortal enemies. Streamers use proximity voice chat, so (again, Dungeons & Dragons-like) often put on voices for fellow participants and their viewers, embodying their characters in game and IRL.
After OnlyFangs began its second season, WoW rose to be among the top five games streamed on Twitch, and hasn’t dropped from the top five since. That’s a big deal, considering WoW is 20 years old, and splashy new entrants like Marvel Rivals have dropped in the last couple months.
We’re not too surprised, though: Twitch audiences have clearly shown an appetite for collaborative roleplay content. Grand Theft Auto V is also consistently one of Twitch’s top games, with many streamers roleplaying solo or in groups, and D&D show Critical Role is arguably one of Twitch’s biggest hits ever.
As for what OnlyFangs is doing numbers-wise, Sodapoppin currently streams around 12 hours of gameplay per day, and brings an average of ~20,000 viewers. Together, those viewers are watching between 250,000 and 370,000 hours of his content every single day, according to data from Streams Charts. In the last 30 days alone, viewers have watched over 7 million hours of WoW content from him, and he’s gained over 20,000 new followers.
So, what does all this mean? For game developers, it’s proof of just how much fervor these streamer-led narratives and events can drive. GTA and Red Dead developer Rockstar has already recognized this: In 2023, it teamed up with a popular mod developer to bring official support to roleplay servers.
WoW developer Blizzard might do something similar—but even if it doesn’t, we suspect it’s keeping an eye on OnlyFangs’ popularity and the part creators play in generating enthusiasm for older games.
