On Halloween, Asmongold’s OTK network held a large hardcore tournament in World of Warcraft Classic. The Twitch streamer Snutz took home $50,000 after defeating his rival Ziqo.
What happened:
- The MMORPG streamer network OTK around Asmongold hosted a WoW Classic hardcore tournament on Halloween called
OTK Hardcore Mak’Gora Tournament
(Classic.Raider.io). - The prize pool amounted to a total of $100,000 and a custom PC from Starforge. $50,000 went to the winner, while the other half of the prize money was distributed among the other top players.
- 64 players qualified for the event. The winner was Twitch streamer Snutz.
What were the tournament rules? The tournament took place on a WoW Classic hardcore server. To participate, players had to create a new Horde character on the American server Skull Rock
.
By October 30, participants had to level their new character to level 60. The tournament itself took place on Halloween, October 31.
On hardcore servers, characters that fall to 0 hit points cannot be played further. So, if a player loses their character, they must create a new character and level up again. Only new and properly registered characters that reached level 60 by the cut-off date of October 30 were allowed to participate in the tournament.
What is a Mak’Gora? Mak’Gora translates roughly to Duel of Honor
in the language of the Orcs from World of Warcraft. It refers to an honorable duel between two members of the Horde faction. Participants usually fight only dressed in loincloths until death.
1 winner and 63 corpses – This is how the hardcore tournament in WoW Classic played out
How did the tournament go? On Halloween, a total of 64 players faced the OTK Hardcore tournament. Initially, there was a qualifying round that was supposed to be non-lethal. However, in fact, three players did not survive the qualification, including one who was caught by an explosion from his Goblin Rocket Boots.
The duel for eighth place initially ended in a tie. However, two rogues faced their own Mak’Gora to resolve it cleanly.
How did the final fight play out? The duel for first place took place between Twitch streamers Snutz and Ziqo. The two fought for four minutes. They both kept their distance and tried to force each other to waste resources.
Snutz the Warlock emerged victorious through a combination of damage-over-time spells and attacks from his demon pet. The character stood triumphantly amidst a heap of corpses – among the 63 slain participants was also the cameraman who was supposed to record the event for a stream.
After the final, Snutz faced another player in a duel, who unfortunately had not officially qualified. Again, the streamer won.
When asked what the winner would do with his $50,000 prize money, Snutz spoke about a potential visit to BlizzCon. For now, however, he wanted to take a break.
Deserved victory or not? The community’s conclusion
On Reddit, user Contract007 states (Reddit) that the two finalists did not win solely through their own efforts: As a participant of the OTK Mak’Gora, everyone knew that Snutz and Ziqo would win from day one.
In the post, Contract007 mentions that in a VOD from Snutz it was already visible a month ago that he had been supplied with important items. Additionally, Snutz had a boost at the start of the tournament that simplified leveling. Furthermore, he had easily obtained a tidal spell before all other players.
The user sees the community of the two streamers as responsible: they actively boosted their idols.
How did the other commentators react? The feedback from the rest of the Reddit community on the post is mixed. User PerfectlySplendid (reddit) points out that streamer Mitch already cheated for $500, and cheating for $50,000 would not be surprising.
Others see it very dryly and write that as long as Blizzard does not officially support these tournaments and does not invest resources behind them, they will not become fairer. However, the rest of the comments praise the performance and entertainment value of the other participants. In general, users hope that in the future, unknown players who do not stream will also get a chance.
Next weekend, BlizzCon 2023 will take place:
BlizzCon 2023 – All important dates for the new WoW expansion, Diablo IV, and more
