The latest World of Warcraft world first race, in which teams compete to finish a new Mythic raid faster than the others, has been settled: But the final boss was so anticlimactic that the winners almost surprised themselves (thanks, GR+).
The War Within's second season started on March 4, and the race to World First focused on the Mythic tier of the Liberation of Undermine raid. The way that the WoW community splits up the World First can be a little confusing, because over the last fortnight various teams have gotten "World First" clears of parts of the raid, but in this case we're talking about beating the whole thing and the final boss, Chrome King Gallywix.
After beating the early bosses in the raid, Team Liquid took 100 attempts to beat Chrome King Gallywix. This is not an unusual number at all, and even slightly on the low side: When you get to Mythic raids, we're talking about the hardest challenges WoW can offer, and final bosses that require god-tier co-ordination and concentration for extended periods. If even one player misclicks or triggers an ability at the wrong time, you're probably looking at a wipe.
And this is probably what led to some surprise and very slight confusion on Team Liquid's part. The team's previous best attempt had gotten Chrome King Gallywix down to 14% health, and the expectation was that going any further would see one of WoW's boss transformations, where an unexpected new attack or different phase triggers.
But Chrome King Gallywix turned out to have nothing up his sleeve. As the team surrounds him and the health bar keeps going down you can hear the team leader Maximum's excitement and almost disbelief as they realise he's going down: They keep pouring on the punishment, easily dodging Gallywix's familiar attacks, and soon enough he bites the big one.
Most of Team Liquid shoot out of their chairs whooping and hugging. Maximum throws his hands up at the screen, the player imexile questions "that's the boss?" while Thdlock just puts his hands out to the camera and says "what!"
You can tell Gallywix didn't cut the mustard, because it took Team Liquid more attempts to beat earlier bosses in the raid. Chrome King Gallywix took 100, but Stix Bunkjunker took 114, and Mug'zee perhaps should've been the final challenge, requiring 148 attempts.
The victory is Liquid's fifth World First tier victory, and is also their first back-to-back raid win in just under five years.
And hey, it may have been a bit anticlimactic but at least it was legit. You wouldn't believe some of the stuff that goes on around WoW world firsts from players who probably care a little too much: Recently a guild of criminal masterminds used exploits to get a "world first" on a new raid, got banned, then put its name backwards and did it again. There are entire guilds dedicated to just trolling as hard as they possibly can.
All good clean fun. More generally, World of Warcraft is enjoying something of a golden age at the moment, and some reckon The War Within is the venerable MMO's best expansion yet. Even if, come season three, some will be hoping that the toughest raid boss is just a little tougher.
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