There is so much to say about this decision. For those who didn’t compete, are a bit confused about the details Blizzard has actually provided, or are choosing to internalize this as though the groups who chose to participate in the realm first race somehow impacts their play - this post is meant to be a respectful digest of the entire situation end to end.
My end hope is that there is indeed some continued oversight from the Developers that will read this and understand completely the impact of their decision, and sincerely understand the alternatives.
The Goal: Challenge Mode Realm Firsts
The Realm First Feat of Strength is to complete all 9 challenge modes on Gold by clearing the dungeons within the limited amount of time. That’s it. For this, similar to leveling, you get a Realm First FoS/Announcement.
This was a challenge of marathoning - this has nothing to do with players locking in the realm-best times and denying other players those best-time Feats of Strength by performing as any meta comp in full gear that is impossible for others to beat. This is a competition of playing for a long time, executing cleanly back-to-back, and doing it FIRST. That’s it. All of these times are sure to get beaten/replaced.
What it meant to execute and why it doesn’t impact realm-best considerations
For some of the earlier remarks, I want to point out why sweaties being sweaties on this has nothing to do with realm-best times in the medium term. Nothing I’m doing has anything to do with your goals and is in no way targeted to deny you those goals.
Challenge modes scale your gear DOWN to 463 (not up!), theoretically meaning that (despite some minor optimizations), once you hit 463 iLvl and get your profs, the experience doesn’t get meaningfully easier.
However… the race to FIRST is NOT IN THE BEST GEAR. Not even close. In addition, some classes are really really good, but while your class might never be able to truly lock in a realm-best time, the ability to marathon to the realm first as your class was far more achievable given the nature of the competition.
As a point of comparison, I play a Rogue (not great for this!) and entered the CMs in 450 gear with 1 of 2 profession benefits (not 463!). In this setup, I was on track to succeed (see below).
Breaking down the requirements on launch…
- Leveling Fast: You needed to be 90 as quickly as possible.
- Minimal Gearing: You needed to gear up fast, and with limited control. Responding to what’s available on the Auction House, responding to what dropped in your first-day heroic lockouts (yes, you can requeue RDF, but you couldn’t target dungeons over-and-over for your True BiS). YOU DON’T END UP WITH FULL BIS, YOU END UP RUNNING THE CHALLENGE MODES IN HILARIOUS LACK OF GEAR, ENCHANTS AND PROFS.
- Coordinated Guild Assistance: Relating to the gearing, if you could shave off time not needing to grab all your own enchants/gems and so forth as it become available on the AH, the better. People in your guild could grab all that stuff while you were running gearing heroics and mail it to you. (
SHOUT OUT TO SUPPORTING PLAYERS 
)
- Execute: Execute the Gold timer in the Dungeons!
These requirements implied a substantial prep effort in Beta. Yes - prep that we as players chose to perform in the assumption that this race would function correctly on live, figuring out the best ways to level (everyone in our group got realm first for their respective class), and practicing the CMs for large chunks of time with mock-bad gear until we were confident we could execute cleanly.
And it absolutely mattered. We were neck-and-neck with another group for the better of a day FOR HOURS ON END. Through the leveling and monitoring each other to see which CMs were getting completed. It was tense, exciting, and FUN.
The Situation: Interweaving Bugs and Poor Resolution Choice
Again - I strive to keep this post respectful, but I think this section is really important to understand the interweave of what occurred, and why this Blue Post is insulting in how it frames the situation.
Bug 1 and the Outcome - THE IMPORTANT BUG
Heroic Temple of the Jade Serpent did not give you credit for the achievement upon its completion. In order to enter Challenge Modes, you needed to complete the dungeons on heroic to unlock the ability to toggle.
In short, this meant groups could go (and did go) legitimate 8/9 Gold Times across all the other dungeons, but were stuck from completing the Realm First due to this bug, because you simply could not go inside. Blizzard has made no effort highlight this as interweaving their roll-back decision (or how they even framed the situation).
Bug 2 - Gold Achievement for Completion
The bug they do highlight here is that people were getting ‘incorrect credit’. If you completed the dungeon at all (not on time), you were getting all three achievements every time. Bronze, Silver, Gold. Every time. Perfectly repeatable bug.
This was present on beta and reported on numerous occasions
Blizzard seems to be focusing on this bug as the problem that needed to be fix - but it’s not. Your character profile has your times embedded, so a data-scrape here would mean all achievement status could be correctly populated with some effort RATHER THAN WIPING YOUR SLATE ENTIRELY CLEAN. If they were pursuing an effort to analyze the characters impacted, this bug wouldn’t actually matter.
Item 3 - Locking the CMs
This was a very good decision. It effectively ‘froze’ the race at the 8/9 stage without allowing groups to start doing the other dungeons while the Jade Temple bug was up, and gave Blizzard any amount of time desired to come to a decision. It was still awkward, our group has considered themselves ‘On Call’ until some decision was made to get online and get inside the Jade Temple ASAP, but we assumed the scope of who we would be rushing against at that point was the one-other group who put in all the same prep and marathon we did to get to that point, not the entire server. I don’t begrudge bugs, I just want considerate resolution.
The Solution(s) and why this is the Worst One
Solution One: Clear the Slate/Achievements and Make Every Group Start Over
Let me be clear. This is the worst possible outcome for those who anticipated the game working the way it was intended. Period.
Blizzard has framed this as “equaling the playing field”, but it’s the direct opposite. It’s resetting it, and on fundamentally different terms. There is NO ROLLOVER from those who were at 8/9 and at the finish line, it moved it from an on-launch marathon to what others have said: A speedrun to complete the 9 dungeons again, which you can now do in COMPLETE GEAR and can do so as the BEST COMPS on Tuesday at 3 PDT. All time from now-until-Tuesday is effective prep time, for a race that should already be over. The marathon aspect is completely gone, and it changes the rules of engagement.
Let me be explicit: As the rogue who poured in Lots of effort, the most rational thing for me to do for the rest of my group is step out and let them bring in a class more effective in the speed run.
“But you’re practiced and ready!”
You can practice the CMs on PTR right now, meaning a better class in my group can be practicing up-to-speed until Tuesday (and will).
Again, the rules of engagement are just fundamentally different. The pool of players now competing in ‘the speed run’ is different from the players who have already completed ‘the marathon’.
Solution Two: Reopen the CMs and Data-Scrape the proper achievement level
This one is Totally Fine. Basically, instead of resetting every achievement, all Blizzard needs to do is recognize that completion timers still exist. Even if the achievement ‘Get Gold!’ was always triggering, clear that, then re-trigger it based on your actual completion time.
That’s it.
Why does it matter? It means that groups sitting and awaiting on legitimate 8/9 Gold Times are only racing against each other to finish the Jade Temple when it goes live. It DOES NOT magically change the playing field to be every possible player who can walk in full BiS with Best Comp across all 9 dungeons on Tuesday (but had yet to enter a CM). And to be clear, THIS WILL BE DONE ON MOST SERVERS ON TUESDAY IN ABOUT ~2-3 HOURS at most.
In short? It’s a viable, technically feasible solution that respects the players who got to the 8/9 Gold point.
There’s plenty of complaints that could be had on this solution - until this was communicated, anyone awaiting news has effectively been ‘on call’ in case the CMs were magically re-opened without comms to hop on immediately to complete. But this is still far far far far better at respecting the original state.
Solution Three: Out of the Box Thinking
I’m going to write this one simply to convey - if Blizzard was in tune with the situation and the interplay of the bugs and the race, there are creative interpretations.
I don’t expect this one to happen, but write it as a clear example.
You have teams who put in the marathon, got to 8/9 Gold legitimate times, and effectively were halted at the finish line. You could assume at that point that any team who completed 8/9 could get over the line at 9/9.
They could respect that. They could trigger the Realm First for every character at 8/9 and call the race. It’s actually the ONLY way to assure that the race now doesn’t return to ‘Who can log on Tuesday and do Jade Temple immediately at 3 PDT’, even compared to solution 2.
Again - I don’t expect that to happen, but I want to convey that Blizzard can make player-guided decisions around the way the game was intended to behave at launch.
Lastly…
Community Perspective
I want to wrap this with a few statements. Player’s reactions to this event and thread will be everywhere. Players will look at a ‘sweaty’ and presume I’m anti-fun or I’m doing things in order to explicitly impede them from achieving the or that I’m just not the prime demographic that represents the community.
Every demographic is valid. In fact - I consider myself to be the demographic.
- I’m a loyal Blizzard/WoW gamer. I’ve been subscribed mostly since vanilla launch, since the dawn of time. WoW is a notable portion of my friend group and while playstyle has altered, it’s been part of my life.
- I’m a dad. 38 y/o with toddler. I’m the gamer dad!! Seriously!
- I’m casual: Yes - you read that. I’m casual as all getup.
I just use my time differently. I get excited by a challenge so I commit to the framework of the challenge. I raid-log. I don’t play alts. I don’t PvP. Some people like to get up all their alts and min-max their profession efficiency and love having one of every class. The AMOUNT of time I play in game compared to many is relatively small, but bursty.
I don’t begrudge people or how they want to play.
I just also want to play the way I want to play, and achieve it, and wish as a long-time WoW fan that Blizzard could figure out a way to keep the effort I put to the goal to be relevant to the outcome.
I was in the Realm First line-up due to my own planning - managing work and family time side-by-side with meaningful prep for a marathon I took PTO. Managed my affairs like an adult. I was at the finish line.
Now the race is cancelled, rebranded, and it would be irresponsible and harmful to my group to scrape back into it. That’s it.
I appreciate you all and thank you the time to read and thoroughly understand the situation.
– Your pal Mystia
