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Siege of Orgrimmar World First race 10/14 after 24 hours
If you look back to the last world first race, Lei Shen was vanquished to riotous acclaim just before the weekly reset by top EU guild, and eventual World First race winners Method. Thanks to the EU's raid reset being one day later, this Tuesday night victory gave them an extra 30 attempts on Ra-Den. The EU has always received the patch a day after the US, meaning the top EU guilds start the race a day behind their US counterparts. It's never usually a problem. But this time around, those of us who are fans of the EU teams were a little worried. Top US guild Blood Legion went 9/14 in around twelve hours, with the tenth boss dropping late last night on Pacific time. This is incredibly fast, particularly compared to the last race, which as we mentioned above, took almost a week. Now, at the time of writing, Blood Legion stands at 10/14, with Method and Exorsus at 9/14. Among the 10-man competitors, Avast stand at 8/14, and Paragon are at 7/14 with Hordlinge and Sanitas at 6/14. So what's going on? Was there just not enough time left for Heroic tuning? Are the fights too easy? Or is the skill gap between these top guilds and the "normal" heroic raider so great that the fights have to be easier? Many Blizzard representatives have mentioned lately that they were looking for a smooth ramp-up, without brick wall bosses like Dark Animus, so maybe this is a result of that. What's your take on it?
Mogu'shan Vaults world firsts
Following the release of the Heroic version of Mogushan Vaults on October 9 in the US and October 10 in the EU, the very, very early morning of October 13 -- 00:43 UK time to be precise -- European guild Method took down Heroic Will of the Emperor 25-man. Despite the delay, where the raids were released in the US several hours earlier, Method came from way behind in the starting grid to snatch the World First from Vodka and Blood Legion. World second went to another European guild, Envy, with Vodka third and Blood Legion fourth. Blood Legion and Vodka set up a healthy lead, alternating first and second between them for Stone Guard, Feng, Gara'Jal and the Spirit Kings, but Method crept into second place for Elegon, the penultimate boss, pushing Vodka into third but still behind Blood Legion. According to Method's website, the world second took place a full 12 hours after their world first. But, the race for 6/6 Mogu'shan Vaults had already been won over 30 hours earlier, when Finnish guild DREAM Paragon swept to the end of the heroic 10-man version of the raid, downing Will of the Emperor on the afternoon of October 11. Paragon came in world 4th for the second 10-man boss, Feng the Accursed, and world 1st for every boss thereafter in the 10-man raids. But it seems that people still count the 25-man race as the "proper" race, despite Paragon's remarkable achievement. What do you think? Can 10-man world firsts be considered the same as 25-man world firsts? Should Paragon try to go back to 25-man? Mists of Pandaria is here! The level cap has been raised to 90, many players have returned to Azeroth, and pet battles are taking the world by storm. Keep an eye out for all of the latest news, and check out our comprehensive guide to Mists of Pandaria for everything you'll ever need to know.
Flameseeker Chronicles: Life in the legions
Last week, Leif Chapelle, a content designer, took some time to update the ArenaNet blog with a bit of a behind-the-scenes look at personal story in Guild Wars 2. He sketched out the structure of how players' biography choices affect their storyline: "To experience every potential storyline being told from level one to 10, you'd need to play the game 30 times (five races times three initial storylines times two internal branches in each storyline)... We have 80 levels of progression for your character, and every 10 levels or so, you'll begin a new chapter in your story." To someone who has rolled a seemingly endless string of alts in virtually every game I've played and is extraordinarily trigger-happy when it comes to remaking characters, this shows a great deal of promise. I'm sure it's quite an angstilicious idea for people who want to savor ALL THE STORY, but I hope that such types might admit (however grudgingly) that too much story is a better option than too little.
Exclusive: Watch "Race to World First" documentary free through Feb. 3
In a game where tools like the Raid Finder have democratized raiding, how does the mindset of players in top-echelon guilds pushing for world firsts differ from yours and mine? How much time do bleeding-edge guilds really put in? What tricks help them push past wipes and overcome raid challenges? How do they make up time and nudge past other guilds to claim world firsts? And why do other WoW players love to follow the action? The whole sprawling scene plays out onscreen in the feature-length documentary Race to World First -- and you can watch it free right here at WoW Insider now through Feb. 3. (The film is also available at RacetoWorldFirst.com for a small fee.) The Looking for Group Productions film, begun back in the day when clawing to a top spot on raiding progression charts was perhaps at its cut-throat peak, follows a handful of top-tier WoW guilds in their sprint to the top. Producers John Keating and Zachary Henderson conducted some of the early interviews for Race two years ago at BlizzCon 2010's WoW Insider reader meetup, including familiar faces like WI Editor Adam Holisky and GM/actress/huntress extraordinaire Michele Morrow. Get a peek at this film for free while you can right here at WoW Insider. Who knows what in-game challenges you might feel up to tackling after seeing that much fiery motivation in action?
StarCraft vs. Warcraft: What is the WoW community missing?
For the past year or so, I've been living a double life. To some, I am a skilled and tenacious night elf priestess, adventuring through Azeroth at the charge of the Holy Light, healing the injured and saving the incompetent. To others, however, I am but a lowly brood mother, commanding a swarming, parasitic army with occasional success against my enemies across the Koprulu sector. Don't follow me? Basically, I've just been playing a lot of StarCraft 2 whenever I'm not raiding. Still, being heavily invested in WoW and StarCraft has really felt like living two lives at times, especially when you consider how dramatically different they both are. And I'm not talking about the gameplay; obviously one would expect an MMORPG and an RTS to be incomparable. What I mean is that that the culture and community that surrounds these two games are distinctively different, despite the fact that the games share some of their playerbase with one another. You'd think that one game community would be pretty similar to the next, but they're not. The whole thing has left me with a lot of questions to turn over in my mind. Is it possible that the WoW and StarCraft communities could learn from the other? Seven years in, is it even possible for the WoW community to change in any significant way at this point? And if so, is there something missing in the WoW community? To explore the idea further, I started making a list of all the things I thought the StarCraft community had that the WoW community was lacking.
The Guild Counsel: A look at Race to World First
As MMOs grow in popularity and age, they're being seen as a serious subject of study. And as they gain acceptance, we're beginning to see more exposure on paper and in film. Recently, we looked at the documentary The Raid, a portrayal of one guild's progression through World of Warcraft raid content. In this week's Guild Counsel, we'll look at yet another new documentary: Race to World First.
New documentary follows the Race to World First
MMO players, have you ever thought that your in-game exploits were worthy of a feature film? Well, they probably aren't, but at the very least they're worth a documentary! An upcoming documentary film by the name of "Race to World First" is about the World of Warcraft guild Blood Legion and its journey to become the number one guild in the world. The only catch is that the current numero uno guild is the internet-famous Paragon. The full documentary can be watched at Looking for Group Productions' website for the meager fee of $2.99. If you'd like a peek at what you'd be getting yourself into, follow on past the cut to watch the documentary's trailer.
Race to World First documentary releasing soon
Looking for Group Productions has been hard at work on its documentary Race to World First for a good long while now, capturing many top-tier World of Warcraft guilds' attempts at claiming coveted world firsts in the raiding game as well as following Blood Legion's race to a top spot. Set to release in a few weeks, Race to World First looks like it's going to be an introspective look at the time and energy that many of these guilds put into the raiding game, as well as an examination of the multicultural nature of the game and the general excitement that goes along with MMO accomplishments. Each week, Race to World First looks at clips from players in guilds that have been fighting for or actually achieved world firsts. Looking back a bit, this clip with Narilka of Ensidia chronicles her time spent with the guild downing Kil'jaeden at the end of The Burning Crusade when she was still just 16 years old. We loved having the Race to World First production team at the WoW Insider reader meetup at BlizzCon in 2010 -- they were some of the nicest guys and had a blast talking to real players and real fans. I am excited to see this documentary. Check out the trailer -- you might even see some familiar faces!
Spiritual Guidance: BlizzCon players tell about their first priests
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers healing for disc and holy priests. This week, Dawn and her shadow priest rival, Fox Van Allen, faced off at the WoW Insider reader meetup in a battle of quips, and it would seem that Dawn came away victorious. Originally this weekend, I had planned on writing a direct address to Blizzard concerning holy priest healing and mana in beta raids. The topic has been a large area of concern for priests on the forums lately, and I thought I should give the discussion a little boost by addressing it in my column. However, I am currently at BlizzCon 2010, and I happened to get the opportunity to talk to Ghostcrawler (lead systems design) in person for a few minutes. During that time, I relayed the general message of our problem (HPS is jank, mana needs work) and figured I'd give the Blizzard developers a week to attend to it before assailing them with complaints. Until then, I ask that my fellow priests not panic for a little while longer. In the words of Toby, who is pictured above, "Keep the faith!" By the way, I'm starting a donation fund for BlizzCon 2011 to buy Ghostcrawler a fedora. Ghostcrawler would look awesome in a fedora. Anyway, to tide you guys over until then, I figured this week I would attempt to entertain you all. At first, I thought I might try to be humorous, and then I remembered I'm not funny. (A priest walks into a bar and ... yeah, I got nothing.) So instead, I've decided to go with priest story time. Hit the jump to see what I mean.
Editorial: Thoughts on the Ensidia ban
Are you wondering what has caused all the ruckus in the raiding community the past few days? Have you been typing your fingers to the bone since Wednesday night, arguing for one side or the other in forums and chat channels? Whoever you are, or whatever side you're on, in the still-burning aftermath of Ensidia's ban, I feel some reflection is needed. Thus, I am going explain, to the best of my ability, what happened to cause such uproar in the raiding community this week. I am also going to, as the title implies, offer my speculations.
Blood Legion scores world first Lich King kill
About one hour ago, WoW.com was notified that Blood Legion of Illidan-US has scored the world first of 10-man The Fall of the Lich King (as well as The Frozen Throne.) Ten lucky Blood Legion members walk away with the Kingslayer title, and a... statue of Tirion Fordring? Well... okay. Why not? Congratulations, Blood Legion. Good luck on the hard modes next week! Before everyone jumps to conclusions and bemoans WoW being easy mode, keep in mind this is only the normal mode of the 10-man difficulty. Blood Legion is a high end 25-man guild, so this kill was not what you would call "pure." A kill this quickly doesn't mean the encounter was trivial, because if that were the case we'd have seen many more kills last night. It simply means Blood Legion had an edge, to say the least.
