World First for latest WoW raid has been attained, and is still a big deal

This story about the Race to World First, boiled down, in 1:39 minutes.

What’s the fuss?

A skilled group of European World of Warcraft players are the first to beat the game’s newest raid on the hardest difficulty — a feat that took 4 days. This achievement may be more significant than you think.

The situation

The MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game) World of Warcraft is beloved for having difficult challenges that can be taken on as a team.

• The ultimate challenge is called a “raid”, where groups between 5 to 40 players take on a very difficult, high level trial where players must fight through hordes of minions to get to a final boss.
• Upon the defeating of that boss, the players are rewarded with rare loot, in-game titles, and of course bragging rights.

Such bragging rights become permanent if a group is the first to complete a raid, on the highest difficulty, in the world — aka World First.

• For WoW’s latest raid released last month, the European guild Echo attained the prestigious World First title.
• The feat took 176 attempts over 4 days, even having to overcome indirect sabotage from the developer themselves.

Boiling it down

Since the dawn of World of Warcraft, the race for World First has been integral to the gaming experience, the concept having spread to many other games due to its popularity.

• The Race to World First is frequently one of the most popular events on content platforms such as Twitch, supported by professional commentary and coverage.

From the outside looking in, being World First may not seem like a huge deal — but it certainly is.

• “Raiding” is big business for gaming organizations, as the immense difficulty pulls in hundreds of thousands of concurrent viewers when teams stream their attempts.
• Due to the intense competition and the increased fandom from winning the race, organizations commit immense resources (including having full time employees) and thousands of man hours.

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Originally published at https://www.boilitdownnews.com.