Despite adversities such as the Corona pandemic, the guild Limit has won the World First race in WoW . However, they missed their daily secret weapon.
The race for the World First kill of Sire Denathrius in Castle Nathria, the only raid in WoW: Shadowlands so far, was some time ago. However, the victory of Complexity Limit (with accompanying nerd screams) is still being discussed and talked about. After all, there were many concerns and criticism directed at Blizzard for opening the raid just before Christmas. The covenant system was also in the crossfire of the community. Concerns that have dissipated over the first weeks.
Complexity-Limit was able to put in a good performance in the “World First” race and defend the title – with a kill just before Christmas, on December 23rd. The magazine PCGamesN conducted an interview with guild officer Xyronic, who had some interesting things to say.
Secret weapon missing – the shared food break
Castle Nathria was also the first raid to take place under the harder issues of the Corona pandemic. One might think that it shouldn’t actually have much impact on a raid group in WoW, but that was not the case. Normally, raid players are together in one place, which brings an additional planning advantage. Xyronic said:
The biggest downside was the strategy aspect. When everyone is at home and there is a food break, everyone gets up from the PC and does their own thing. But when we are together, we talk all the time during breaks. That’s basically 45 minutes of additional strategy discussion. When we then sit back down at the computer, we all have a clearer idea of what exactly we planned and wanted to do. Losing that was unfortunate.
Covenant differences smaller than feared
A major criticism of Blizzard prior to the release was also the differences between the various covenants. Professionals feared that they would essentially have to play every class four times to have a representative for the Kyrians, Necrolords, Night Fae, and Venthyr. Especially during the beta, many players assumed that Blizzard would not manage the balancing. But apparently the differences turned out to be smaller than expected. When asked if players had to change their covenant during progression, Xyronic explained:
Fortunately not. Much of our criticism simply died when they decided to tone down the overpowering abilities. Even if you chose a covenant that wasn’t the best, it was probably a difference of less than 1% for most classes.
While there were a few who changed their abilities independently, that would have been more of a personal preference and not mandated.
Castle Nathria was damn good – only one boss was not
Generally, many raiders were surprised by how good the raid Castle Nathria was. The balancing of most bosses was – even though there were some nerfs in the first days – quite good. Especially the fight against Shriekwing was almost perfectly tuned and just allowed for a kill before the raid group was taken down by the boss itself. However, the good mood shifted with the generals of the Stone Legion:
After we killed the eighth boss, Shriekwing, everyone was extremely impressed by how well Blizzard had done the tuning for the bosses. (…) Everyone was really satisfied, but when we moved on to the next boss, the generals of the Stone Legion, that disappeared.
Everything was manageable, but it was a very painful experience. The fight was completely random. We didn’t know in what order the mechanics would come, making it very hard to prepare. I would say half of our progress went into mechanics coming in an order we had never seen before.
But Xyronic is not only satisfied with Castle Nathria, but with the entire Shadowlands expansion.
I believe this is a fairly common view among all those who are currently playing. Many of us were really concerned about some of the design decisions they made, especially in the Shadowlands beta. But Blizzard did a damn good job of bringing everything together and making this expansion fun. I’m having a lot of fun, even outside of the raid.
Do your opinions and experiences align with those of the professionals from Complexity Limit? Or do you perceive Shadowlands differently?
Information about the next raid can be found at BlizzConline – which takes place in a month.
