The Cost of World First

Community General Discussion
21

Average player like us would not be worried with 13,500 gold coming in every week, but a world first that wants to make gold fast that not going to be fast enough. The issue is others taking the example of these elite guilds to heart as the way to win.

Thinking that they will need billions of gold to be competitive as the world first guilds, and then falling short of their goals and turning to buying tokens for gold. This the pressure that some guilds believe is necessary to be good.

That is the issue with the World First race being so over hyped as it gives the wrong ideas to some players.

22

I guess I should rephrase and say being able to spend cash on wow tokens or trade office chairs and other such nonsense for in-game cold should not be allowed. My understanding streamers were giving away physical items for gold/tier to help obtain this title. Feels like cheating to me.

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23

No, this is not for those who just want to play for fun. This is about those elite jerks that site on the forums and tell how great they are cause they cleared mythic, and let everyone know they need to get gud.

Those are the ones that tell everyone in their guild they need to start making gold so they can go compete for world first, and then expecting them to drop some real cash to make it happen. If there are enough that have this mentality that can encourage Blizzard to take other measures to improve token sales.

24

Strangely, I dont recall that many people being

Maybe I missed the posts but I suspect if anyone made those sorts of posts or comments they’d get lots of funny emotes and linked images of amusement.

And if that happens it must in private because Ive never seen or heard it happen.

25

Any guild that abused massive gold funds and splits with an endless supply of “supporters” are complete losers in my eyes. It wasn’t them working together as a guild to accomplish something great, it was them abusing their prestige. I’ll be more impressed by the guilds that did it without all the gold/split runs with communities by far. It’s also why I never watch the “Race to World First” because it’s basically roiding of the WF race.

26

They show up, it mostly in posts about “getting help with DPS” or “the content is too hard”, they like to show up and let everyone know how epic a player they are and that’s why they suck.

It would have to be hash hash otherwise it would be against Blizzard’s code of content I would assume, d fall under no in game trade for real cash I think. I can not say it happened but can not say it has not come up in guilds before.

27

It’s so corny. This is just the TIP of the Iceberg.

I bet you can’t guess what Blizzard calls the tool they use to screw us with?

(It’s Iceberg…)

All of this exists, and for the overwhelming majority of players, boosting is the only way they will ever get to see that content. Even highly skilled players who have been raiding since the beginning of Vanilla until now, are not able to participate in the top end content of the game they have been participating and accomplishing top end content in, for over a decade.

It’s robbery. They’ve come and taken the game from us. Now they just want it to be a “VIP Club” like a pay to win mobile game, where you are only good for a “season” and then you have to spend again.

We’re supposed to believe that Blizzard has the utmost integrity and would never violate the Gamer Code. That all of this is accidental, coincidence, merely unintended consequences.

But do we “really” know that Blizzard isn’t orchestrating all of this, intentionally?

The “boosters”, the “mega-gold communities”, the intentional tuning of the game to force people to lean into paying to win, before they can even get their foot in the door with Raiderio KSM, PVP and Raiding Achievements vs actual invites to a dedicated team.

I mean. I’ve heard some things about Blizzard recently. Seems like they are actually quite capable of some dark, twisted and egregious stuff, man.

Seems to me Ion’s dream was always to run a Mafia MMORPG where the fun is on prohibition because they are making so much money selling bootleg moonshine boosts.

Where raiding is somehow “gangster” and only “the family” can do it. But only because you tuned most people out of it, with anti-human mechanics. Where you literally have to dedicate your life to it, more than a lot of careers… in order to succeed.

I won’t say that “all boosters” and “all gold conglomerate’s” are Blizzard Employee’s or Bots. Because that’s obviously not the case. There “is” a black market to this grey market, after all.

But there is definitely more to this than we know.

And people pay for it apparently. Enough to basically sacrifice the entire player base just to focus on the spenders alone.

Interesting trade off. I hardly doubt it was worth it though.

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28

Again I feel like you don’t understand the gold market. For example the miners hat xmog made by LW sells for on average 750-1mil gold and sell 4-5 per week. With that gold income where do you feel the need to buy tokens? My example was a gold is not hard to come by simply logging in and doing the normal weekly chores gives plenty of gold. If you want the millions then you gotta work a little harder but not allot

29

Liquid trading gear for a 10 million gold per item meant they had spent a large amount to get to World First and to be able to have enough at hand for each step, repairs, flask. That gold had to come in fast and just doing what a casual player does I do not believe would have gotten them the amount they needed in time.

30

I agree but nor did they hence the amount of debt they are in to other guilds that they will spend the next 3-4 months paying back

31

This is a two sided coin issue. One side is casual that only need the simple ways to make gold , but then there is the hardcore players who need to make huge amounts of gold to be a world first guild.

The issue comes when casual guilds take this as a an example of how you become a good player. That it takes more gold than it would be feasible for a normal player to gain without putting the time into it. They watch how these top tier players are spending gold and are able to to continuously make it back quickly, and ask why are they not able to as well? They then hear about tokens and selling boosts and decide that is the way to be at at the same level.

32

Access to gold is the least of the advantages guilds like Liquid or Echo have over “regular” guilds.

Like it gets hyped up a lot, but realistically speaking it helps way less than every player in that guild having the time, effort and skill at being able to play and gear half a dozen alts to a level where they can run several splits even from as early as week 1.

Not to mention stuff like having WeakAura authors on hands to whip up custom weakauras as they’re needed (and naturally have those weakauras before the competition).

If any guild wants to compete with Limit or Echo, “having a lot of gold” is probably the easiest hurdle for them to clear. Even if you’re relatively unknown, if you’re good enough to compete with the big boys skillwise, your guild bank(s) can easily reach the required numbers.

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33

Yikes!

How many Reins of the Mighty Caravan Brutosaurs could be bought with all that gold! :open_mouth:

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34

If you want to try and get World First, you too are welcome to get good enough, get your own Twitch (or whatever) stream, attract sponsors who want to watch you try, and then spend some of that sponsorship money.

Or, you can just work on “Server first”.

Anyway, you’re looking only into the material cost of what they did, and overlooking the time cost. These are people who were working on stuff every day for multiple weeks. For a while they traveled to be in the same room with each other, to make communication easier. They were perfectly willing to throw themselves at bosses, knowing they’ll lose, just to test out strategies and see what happens.

Compared to them, nearly everyone else is a casual, and token purchases just don’t make a difference.

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35

its honestly pathetic what nu-blizz has allowed to happen to this game. No wonder they have to spend time sexually harassing women because sitting back and looking and their work has to bring tear to the eye of everyone involved

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36

Apparently the cub towers are back enjoy your vacations ?

37

In the MMO, raiding is every bit the effort that the name implies. Competitive guilds have to gather a band of players who will pour their time into gathering the best loot, creating the best characters, developing the best strategies, and becoming one cohesive unit - all in order to clear a gauntlet of bosses and enemies (a raid/tier) as fast as they possibly can.

This can all be immensely draining and Truefire knew the effects of that drain better than most. He had just come from a legendary guild called Blood Legion - perhaps one of the most tryhard names imaginable for a guild that did try very hard. Blood Legion was a big name in WoW raiding, regularly being in the first 5 guilds worldwide to clear raids at the highest difficulty level (Mythic) and sometimes reaching the vaunted World First.

A Mythic raid is a huge task to clear regularly. Clearing it on a timeline, faster than literally any other guild in the world, is herculean. There’s another layer of difficulty in that this is all a kind of “Running of the Guilds.” Every competitive guild worldwide all simultaneously trying to outrun the other in a Race to World First (RWF).

For raiders, it’s more of a seasonal thing. Blizzard announces the new raid and the guilds take time off and pour whatever they can into beating the raid as quickly as possible. If you are aiming to be the first in the world to clear the raid, then It is a 12-16 hour-a-day affair, that can last for weeks.

Naturally, this process is a turnover generator - both individual players and guilds at large will step down from hardcore or raiding leave the game entirely.

Liquid, the North American guild and one of their major competitors, shared the bill of their race to World First so far. Through the purchase of gear, runes, enchantments, and consumable items to give the guild the edge they needed to push through phases, Liquid spent approximately 723 million gold–535 million of which was borrowed. When converted into WoW tokens, Liquid has spent the equivalent of 4,600 tokens, or $93,000, and is in debt with about $69,000 of that total.

There is so much pressure on these guilds to reach World First that it costs are more than just gold. However, that not what many will be thinking about. Players want the fastest way of achieving greatness and will think buy throwing enough gold at it will get them there.

That is the p2w factor taking over when poeple start hearing about guilds selling boosts and paying players for gear. It just takes money to be great not skill or effort. Teams like Liquid or Limit should be glorified for the amount of pain they have to take than just the end achievement.

38

the amount of drones excusing the p2w of this race is honestly mind boggling.

Yes money isnt all it takes, nobody is saying that except you and everyone agrees.
the fact they can use money to get an advantage over other players is disgusting and ruins all legitimacy to the race. Knowing the 40 best players were neck and neck until one of the 20 player teams dropped 100k real life money for in game gold then won is just pathetic and it should not be allowed at all in any way shape or form. This game has become p2w and youre all to blinded to admit it

39

You thinking gold/token value makes it pay to win means you don’t understand what’s going on at all. They don’t need to buy tokens. They can sell aotc and ce boosts. Plus full heroic and mythic clears (which are much more expensive) and anyone who can afford mythic boosts is an ah goblin and has no need to buy tokens for gold. :man_facepalming:

40

Wonder why most of what they spent was borrowed gold from third parties including old boost communities that they then have to ‘pay back’ with interest and how it’s happened so many times in a row… Totally not sus at all.

If gold wasn’t such a ‘hurdle’ then why do these top raiding guilds consistently have to ‘borrow’ gold from lenders every race while having no issues with the rest of things?