Twitch Chat Hivemind Played World of Warcraft—And Just Maxed Out a Character

A streamer let his chat clumsily control a World of Warcraft character with text commands—and they got to level 70. Here's how it went down.

Kate Irwin5 min read

“This is a showcase of chat’s talents,” Labat said. “I felt it better I act as the man behind the curtain, ever present to troubleshoot or patch something that’s needed.”

That said, not every Twitch Plays WoW stream has gone smoothly. Sometimes, trolls take the reins and kill the character, or make them idle for hours in bizarre locations like a canal.

But Labat doesn’t call his chatters who like to derail Jenkins’ progress trolls—because, in his words, they’re the ones who tend to stay in the chat the longest.

“Other than the occasionally ‘cheeky’ chatter who will come in and repeatedly kill the character over and over, or stick them in a far off place… I’d say the toughest part? Dragon riding,” Labat told Decrypt, referring to the mechanic where players can ride dragons to fly to remote locales in WoW’s vast world.

“Now, chat eventually came together to work out a strategy of how to do it, but that took the longest,” the streamer shared.

From a technical perspective, Twitch Plays WoW was a pieced-together project.

“I sort of Frankensteined existing, disparate pieces of software to create a functioning Twitch Plays for World of Warcraft,” Labat said of creating the feature for his community, whom he described as “welcoming but very protective of me and my family.”

“They love to rib me, and I make myself the butt of the joke," Labat said, "so any chance they get to ‘interact’ with me, they love it."

What’s next for the streamer now that his chat has achieved level 70? Ahead of reaching the milestone Tuesday, Labat said he’d love to have a day-long party in a WoW town square, and then get Blizzard’s “blessing or nod of approval” for his Twitch Plays feature.

“My dream is to get a group of people together who understand the character and won’t accidentally report it,” Labat said, “and then I want to see if Twitch Plays can run a raid.”