Raiding is constant stress – Professional guilds reveal what kind of torture they put themselves through.
The raids of World of Warcraft are considered the ultimate challenge of PvE on mythic difficulty. However, those who do not want to settle for defeating the current final boss only in the second or third month after release and play at the top must sacrifice quite a lot. The English gaming site PCGamesN spoke with several professional raiders. They explain why raiding in WoW has never been so demanding.
For most players, one main character is sufficient, maybe one or two alt characters with solid gear for variety. In the professional guild Method, 6 characters are mandatory. This is not about any “bad alts” that have just reached level 110, but there are clear requirements: 1 character with Artifact weapon level 54 and 5 others with at least 35 points in the weapon. Additionally, each must have an item level of at least 880. This is not “the high-end goal”, but the minimum requirement to even participate.
The reason for this is that different classes achieve varying utility in different fights. In a fight with a lot of movement, some classes perform better than others. Every player must always be capable of switching to another character to perfectly meet the needs of the encounter.
“Normally, during progression time, we raid for 14 hours a day – 8 hours are planned for sleep and a few hours for breaks during the day. We estimate around 10 days of progression before there could be first problems with possible attendance obligations,” explains Sco from Method.
No wonder, then, that the professionals use all their vacation time to be fully available on the days right after the launch of a new raid. That they work around 98 hours a week in intense concentration – because that’s what professional raiding is – is seen by very few.
But the pure raid time is only the “reward” for the weeks of preparation. The Method recently posted a screenshot of a bank character whose entire inventory is filled with runes. Each rune strengthens a character for an hour but loses its effect upon death. A rune is used for each individual pull.
But why do the players put themselves through this?
There isn’t much reward for the work, as sponsorship contracts are limited. They also don’t want to stream current progression raids, as this would give competing guilds insight into their tactics. There is an unwritten law that guides and streams of undefeated bosses are only created once at least 5 guilds have defeated the boss.
Sparty from the guild Death Jesters hopes that raiding could soon become an eSport, with clear rules and winnings, to give professionals more incentives beyond fleeting fame.
“Whether this catches Blizzard’s attention and becomes profitable remains to be seen. But I believe raiding as an eSport has a better chance of becoming a reality than legacy servers.” – That hit home.
Recently, a guild of hearing-impaired players even defeated the Emerald Nightmare on mythic!
