With WoW Dragonflight, Blizzard changes how raids are released. Gone is the “grace period” in Mythic mode – it gets serious right away for all guilds.
When new raid content is released in World of Warcraft, many players follow the “World First” race. It’s about which guild manages to complete the latest raid on the highest difficulty. Until now, this race started with a delay, as the Mythic raid opened only after the Normal and Heroic ones. But with Dragonflight, Blizzard changes its plans – bringing fresh air to the race.
What was the problem before? Previously, the Mythic raid was released one week after the other difficulties. This allowed professional raiders to have a week to master the raid on “Heroic” and gear up significantly through “split runs”.
With Dragonflight, guilds must decide whether to make progress in the Mythic raid right at launch or gear up in the initial days. This adds a tactical element, potentially leading groups to start the Mythic raid at different times.
Dragonflight launches on November 29, 2022:
When do the raids start? The first raid of Dragonflight, the “Vault of the Incarnates,” opens its doors in Europe on December 14. Due to different maintenance times and time zone differences, Americans get a few hours head start. They will begin their new raid on December 13.
A nice side effect is that item rewards from “Mythic+” will not be throttled in the first week. Since the Mythic raid opens at the same time, you can grab the best rewards from the dungeons in the first week – if you can handle them.
Why is Blizzard doing this? While the developers did not officially state a reason in their announcement, it is apparent. A simultaneous start of the raids is, on one hand, an experiment to see if this positively affects the player experience, and on the other hand, it is the only option to avoid the discontent of the professionals. Because if the Mythic raid were to open a week later, it would be on December 21.
This would mean that Mythic raiders would be in the progress phase over Christmas and have to choose between their raid group and family during the holidays – something that would negatively reflect on Blizzard.
There is still a chance that the race for the First Kill could extend into Christmas, but the first raid of an expansion is usually a bit easier. Additionally, Blizzard has stated after the Sepulcher of the First Ones (Patch 9.2) that the difficulty was too high and that they prefer to keep things slightly easier on Mythic difficulty in the future.
Will you follow the race for the “World First”? Or does that not interest you at all?
