I have personally no use for watching anyone play a game I play myself. Not only that, I don't watch tv, movies, youtube, twitch etc. SO not my thing....

ESO population skews a little older. I've noticed a distinct lack of twitch interest in older gamers.

Why watch a game being played when I can play the game?

I have watched specific videos to learn Boss Mechanics or find a Skyshard. This is not something I would get from a Twitch Stream.

RPGs are played in people's heads, not on someone else's screen.

Sporigudinai wrote: »

Looking at the SteamCharts numbers, we can see that ESO have almost the same number of players online as Albion Online, Path of Exile, Black Desert, Diablo IV, etc... But, if you look at the top most watched games on Twitch (https://www.twitchmetrics.net/games) this month or any other, we can see ESO way back at the bottom of it. So, i was wondering, why that happens?
Is the game boring to watch? Need more good streamers? No time for it?

U35 is what happened. That was the last straw for most of the end game streamers. You can google "Nefas U35" and see a 45 minute or so video as to all the reasons U35 was the last straw.

In a nutshell, ESO adopted a major focus on recruiting new, casual players and left the dedicated veteran players in the ditch and drove off without them.

ESO has never been a popular game on Twitch unless people are being lured with free drops.

PvP is largely dead and that is the content which seems to do best on platforms like that.

What games are supposedly more interesting to watch on Stream? When I do watch a Stream or video, it is for informational purposes, a first look at something, or for the Streamer and their commentary.

I'll just quote my comment to the same question in a thread from October '23, because it's still valid, I think:

I'm in my mid fourties, came to ESO from the other Elder Scrolls titles (Morrowind and Oblivion, mostly, Skyrim as well).

I have a fulltime job, and that doesn't leave unlimited spare time for hobbies. So if I want to do something ESO, I play it, I don't watch other people playing it.
But even if I had the time on my hands, I can't imagine sitting around watch other people play video games. I just don't see the appeal. I guess the reason is that what interests me in games is experiencing the world, the story, and my character, and doing that myself is a lot more fun and interesting than having someone else do it. Competitive or high-end-skill gaming doesn't interest me, so no reason to watch PvP or Trials or stuff like that.

The one and only exception in my case is one streamer I stumbled upon while having Twitch running for drops (usually muted in the background). He is mostly doing housing showcases (showing off the amazing creativity and artistic talent of people), and creates a wonderfully relaxed, friendly, positive atmosphere regarding his content and his viewers. Plus he has a great voice, diverse interests that lead to some interesting "off-topic" tangents, and is actually funny without constantly trying to be hilarious for entertainments sake. So if I happen to have an hour or two, usually on weekends, I actually watch his streams.

So, I don't know about competing MMOs (don't play them), but I could imagine that ESO is a game that attracts quite a few players like myself, who play the game for content that is best experienced directly, not via the performance of others, have certain limits on their free time, that make them picky about what to do with it, and prefer a certain maturity (for lack of a better word, it still is about fun and games, but on another level) in content and presentation that not every streamer can provide. And such players aren't the best clientele for streams. Nothing to do with ESO itself.

I don't follow streamers on any game I play as I am busy playing the game. There was one exception when I was in the guild of a streamer. I followed there because a lot of the guild interaction took place on stream rather than the in-game chat. I found it somewhat awkward with only having one monitor and preferring to play games full screen. I either had to ctl/tab a lot or run a smaller game window to be able to keep up with the stream.

Watching someone else play a video game would be like watching someone else watch a movie. I'll just cut out the middle man and play the game or watch the movie myself, thanks.

Zero interest in watching, more interested in playing.

I don't watch Twitch or any other streaming platform. I want to play the game myself not watch someone else. It's boring to me.

If they set up a pvp arena type league and fixed the pvp lag it would rapidly move up the Twitch list. Noone wants to watch someone finding furniture plans and where to place the painting in their house or farming ore and cloth.

I don't see what anyone gets out of watching someone else play.

I remember looking up a boss fight once and found a video supposedly showing how to defeat them, but all I saw was a player running around and different effects going off. It was impossible to figure out what there were doing. How is that helpful or entertaining?

Because ESO is mostly casual.