In World of Warcraft, the race for the “World First Kill” is over. The guild “Team Liquid” has overtaken Echo and Method and secured the kill on Scalecommander Sarkareth – but during a crucial phase of the race, the stream was off on Twitch. The raid leader Maximum had almost 40,000 viewers live that day.
This is the situation:
- In a World First race in WoW, it is about which guild defeats the currently hardest boss in World of Warcraft on the hardest difficulty level first worldwide.
- The race actually takes place publicly: The raid guilds stream their boss fights on Twitch, fighting for advertising money and popularity. WoW has never had more viewers on Twitch than during a World First race.
- But the US guild Team Liquid decided to skip the Twitch stream during the crucial phase of the race and “secretly” train for the final boss fight.
“I know you’re mad – I don’t care”
This is how the leader justified the absence of the stream: When Team Liquid had defeated the penultimate boss in the raid and was about to pull the final boss, the raid leader, Maximum, said:
We’re going to try a bit without a stream now and go to bed early. I know it will really annoy some people, but I want to make it very clear: I don’t care at all. The only thing I’m interested in is winning. Everything we do from now on will only help our competitors, to be honest, and that sounds – I don’t know – like a really stupid idea. I’ll see you tomorrow.
US guild skips Twitch stream
This is what the leader says: After the boss finally fell the next day, Team Liquid’s leader Maximum explained:
That’s why we didn’t stream last night. I have the feeling that if we had streamed the strategy and they [Method and Echo] had woken up to that strategy, they would have killed the boss before we woke up.
This is the background: If Team Liquid had streamed their attempts on the boss, the European guilds Echo and Method would have woken up in the morning and could have analyzed Team Liquid’s tries to gain an informational advantage. Then they would probably have killed the boss while Team Liquid was still asleep.
Therefore, the US guild Team Liquid consciously decided to forfeit Twitch fame for a few hours and annoy the fans as long as they secured the victory.
That was the moment of victory:
Streamer gave up about 40,000 viewers
How many viewers did he give up? Maximum streamed “only” 9 hours on May 14 when they were training, instead of 15 hours as usual. One can assume that about 3-6 hours were not shown – with around 40,000 viewers at peak.
Maximum was the biggest solo streamer for WoW on Twitch last week – only the guild “Echo_Esports” had more viewers. Team Liquid’s official stream ranked third.
On the last day of the race, when Team Liquid secured the World First, Maximum even had 92,000 viewers at peak.
For the fans, it may be frustrating to have missed an important part of the race when Team Liquid was “learning” the boss. But apparently, the guild deemed it necessary.
WoW: Here it is! Team Liquid secures the World First Kill of Scalecommander Sarkareth
