Athene
Anyone who made the World of Warcraft unsafe between the expansions The Burning Crusade and Cataclysm and followed community reports beyond their own server could not have missed the name Bachir “Athene” Boumaaza.
The self-proclaimed “best paladin in the world” was controversial in his videos, as his alter ego Athene often came across as arrogant and unsympathetic. At the same time, he often backed up his words in WoW with actions:
- In The Burning Crusade, he managed to level from 1 to 70 faster than any other player.
- In the 2vs2 and 3vs3 modes of the arena PvP from TBC, he was ranked first.
- In Wrath of the Lich King, he won the race to reach the maximum level of 80 again, but was subsequently banned for allegedly exploiting a bug.
- With Cataclysm, he once again claimed the record, reaching the maximum level of 85 as the first player ever.
Thanks to his character Athene and his in-game successes, Bachir’s YouTube channel reached almost 600,000 subscribers in 2013. Later, he left gaming to raise several million US dollars for charity campaigns. He also founded his own religion.
Here is the nostalgic trailer for WoW Cataclysm:
Kungen
One of the first and most famous players from WoW who made a name for himself mainly through his raid successes is Thomas Bengtsson Amèdèo. The Swedish player founded the progress guild Nihilum in 2004 and stood at the forefront of the numerous World-First kills of the community with his character Kungen.
For many WoW players of the early years who were interested in World-First races, Kungen was clearly the best tank of the Vanilla and TBC era. In Wrath of the Lich King, the player then made a mark under the flag of Ensidia (a merger of the guilds Nihilum and Curse) with the World-First kills of Kel’thuzad, Sartharion 3D, Malygos, and Algalon.
However, there was an unfortunate end to Kungen’s time with the heroic Lich King in a critical final battle. Due to the exploit allegedly being deliberately exploited through the usage of Saronite bombs, Ensidia’s raid received a ban penalty. The EU guild Paragon took advantage of this and secured the most important World First kill of WotLK.
With Cataclysm, Kungen then left World of Warcraft, only to celebrate a comeback with the release of WoW Classic in 2019. A permanent return was planned, and indeed he still streams from WoW Classic today (via Twitch). Additionally, some references still remind us of the once-best tank in WoW, such as the trading card “Kungen the Thunderer”.
For many years now, Ion Hazzikostas has been more than just a player of World of Warcraft, but a significant developer at Blizzard. Today, he, as Game Director, sets the gameplay direction of the MMORPG; before that, he was Lead Game and Lead Encounter Designer.
Ion Hazzikostas made his jump to Blizzard because, as a passionate progress raider and theorycrafter of the website Elitist Jerks, he could attract the attention of the WoW team. He was the one who mathematically demonstrated why C’Thun from the Temple of Ahn’Qiraj could not be defeated. This led to hotfixes from the developers and later his hiring.
Sco
Thanks to Twitch and grandly staged World-First races, many other progress players have transformed into personalities with quite large fan bases in recent years. One of the most well-known professional raiders of the last decade is certainly Scott “Sco” McMillan.
The founder and CEO of Method transformed a progress guild from WoW into a successful eSports organization that, over time, has secured an impressive twelve (!) World-First kills of final bosses. Moreover, Method is considered a pioneer of great progress events, where the guild streamed the entire competition live on Twitch.
In the summer of 2020, however, there was a hard setback for Method and Sco. After team members were accused of sexual harassment, the company faced closure. Many players left the guild to start anew under the newly established banner of Echo – with considerable success.
However, Sco remained loyal to his community and built a new roster. Since then, it has not been enough for the big hit. In the last World-First race in Amirdrassil, Method secured a respectable third place behind Echo and Liquid.
