The grandest WoW guilds raced for a world first raid clear hinged on a new secret boss, and the winner was 'None of the Above'

World of Warcraft: Classic's Season of Discovery is Blizzard's way of shaking things up, a kind of WoW Remix that has something for everyone, as well as new challenges for the most dedicated players. Season of Discovery moves in phases, a bit like live service seasons, and entered its fourth phase on July 12, releasing new elements in waves: First a new level cap (60) with new runes and a new dungeon, followed by world bosses on July 18, and then the raids Molten Core and Onyxia's Lair on July 25.

It's the latter we're concerned with. These are foundational for WoW, the only two 40-player raids available at the game's launch, and were probably the very first activities in the game that came with genuine bragging rights. Obviously this is a world and community that's now had two decades of history atop that, and so the rework of the Molten Core raid in particular attracted attention from the kind of serious guilds that take on world firsts, which is being the first raid team to beat the new content at its highest level.

There are some interesting kinks to the Molten Core rework, notably the "Heat Level 3" difficulty, and the addition of a mystery secret boss, the 11th in the raid. We'll go on to talk about this boss so, if you're planning your own tilt at the raid and don't want to know what it is, stop now.

Molten Core is obviously a raid familiar to most WoW players, but Heat Level 3 proved to be a killer, amping up weak bosses like Lucifron to party-wiping levels and requiring stacked fire resistance gear throughout. The biggest guilds in WoW were all in for this but, amusingly enough, the winners are called "None of the Above", stylised <NOTA>. Per Wowhead, the winning team's composition was mostly casters (Mages, Priests, and Warlocks especially), and the guild used a weak aura that tracked cooldowns on their Duke's Domain trinkets, providing extra Fire Resistance zones.

Most excitingly, the final challenge of this raid was the new secret boss on Heat Level 3, which is a fairly good gag unto itself: none other than the Molten Core. Blizzard went there, and the final boss of this raid on the highest difficulty is the gigantic ball of lava from which Ragnaros himself emerged.

The Molten Core has a whopping 4 million health alongside a guild-wilting selection of fire-based spells and a bunch of Primal Flame Elementals helping it out. None of the Above failed on its first attempt, but on the second that fire resistant trinket malarkey proved invaluable: the world first victory can be seen below.

The Molten Core dropped an assortment of items that are all available from other bosses, presumably so that average players like me aren't forced into the thankless Heat Level 3 mines in search of the best items.

It should be said that the WoW community's expectations of this secret boss were possibly a little unrealistic, and the reveal that it's a giant ball of fire that sits there while you spam attack and dodge AoE… well, there's some disappointment. Others take a more phlegmatic view. "Stand in a circle and shoot," observes Bodacious Ape, "just like the good old days." This is, after all, WoW: Classic.