Did WoW’s Mythic Dungeon Invitational change your view on esports?

This weekend marked the finals of the first-ever World of Warcraft Mythic Dungeon Invitational, and man, was it a heck of a lot more popular than I ever imagined it would be. I mean, I get that esports are growing in popularity every day, but even still, the popularity of the MDI surprised me. And I don’t just mean the finals — every single week of the MDI seemed to generate unexpected hype.

My raid team was happily discussing and dissecting it in Discord, Twitter was aflame with people caught up in the hype train, and Twitch even saw more than 50,000 viewers tune in for the final round. What I’m getting at is, the folks who usually watch little to no esports at all couldn’t get enough of the MDI. Even more impressive is the fact that the is more or less a completely PVE esports event — outside of BlizzCon’s occasional raid races, WoW esports have stuck to PVP.

But the popularity of the event ensures we’ll see more PVE-based WoW esports events in the future — or at least, I hope it does. The overlap between serious PVE and PVP players in WoW seems fairly small, and having an event like this not only caters to the former crowd, but it also helps to keep something like Mythic+ dungeons around in the future. And given what seems to be positive reception to the new “Challenge Mode”-like content, that’s a very good thing.

Of course, this could all be my own viewpoint obscuring the actual truth of things. Maybe only 1% of this site’s readership watched the MDI — or maybe 99% did. Which is why I want to know: Did you tune into the MDI? If so, did it change how you feel about esports? Are there any things you’d like changed in the future? And if you didn’t tune in, what would convince you to in the future? Sound off below!