The pros in World of Warcraft are currently engaged in “Split Raiding” – but what are these “splits” exactly? We explain the term to you.
If you’re currently interested in World of Warcraft, you’ve probably already heard about the “World First Race”. Here, the best guilds in the world compete to be the first to complete a raid at the highest difficulty. But when you watch the streams of the pros, you might furrow your brow in confusion. Often, the pros are not doing the mythic raid at all, but are just running normal or heroic instead.
On the screen, it usually states as an explanation that “splits” or “split raids” are taking place.
But what does that actually mean and why do the best players in the world do this?
What are “splits”? “Split Raiding” refers to the situation when the actual professional raid group splits into multiple groups and then creates their own raid groups to instead clear the heroic and normal raid. Typically, these groups consist of only 3 to 7 characters from the professional raid, while the rest is filled with secondary characters, fans, or mercenaries.
From the very beginning of such a split raid, it is clear: All equipment that drops in the raid goes to the pros. All others forfeit their claim to loot.
This leads to the observation during streams that the pros seem to be in different groups – but this is solely for the purpose of acquiring equipment.
Why do the pros do this? The reason is simple: strong equipment. To master the hardest content, the pros must obtain the best possible equipment, and that can also be found in the heroic and normal raid. Because the professional guilds at the top (such as Method, Echo, or Team Liquid) all play at an extremely high level that is very close together in gameplay. The differences mainly lie in the equipment.
A few decimal places of performance from one or two better items can make the difference between a “World First Kill” and a defeat.
Per week, characters only have one right to loot from a boss. So if Character A was present when defeating “Queen Ansurek,” they cannot receive loot from the queen (at the same difficulty) that week. This applies even if no item dropped for Character A, but other players received the loot. However, since a boss drops between 4 and 6 items, each character only receives loot very rarely.
Therefore, it is only efficient to ensure that loot is immediately passed on to the pros in case of a drop, and these characters have a special claim.
Is this allowed? Yes, essentially there is nothing against maximizing loot acquisition. For many players and fans, it is even a good way to come into contact with the idols of the professional guilds – or even earn a bit of gold.
Even before a “World First Race,” the big guilds are always looking for supporters who commit to participating in the split raids and handing their loot over to the pros. This is usually compensated with a nice sum of gold – typically between 100,000 and 300,000 gold for 1-2 hours of running through the normal or heroic raid while largely being “carried” by the pros.
What are the drawbacks of splits? There are several disadvantages, with two standing out in particular.
The first point is the pressure that arises from the existence of split raids. From the perspective of many, the existence of split raids encourages a “degenerate” relationship with the game. It can be advantageous to have many characters at max level to host multiple split raids, in the hope that one of them will get the best possible drops. The more max-level characters one has, the more one must participate in split raids to eventually get the “perfect” character.
The second negative point is probably the entertainment factor. For the community and fans of the World First Race, it is generally very tiring to watch the pros farm trivial content for hours (for them) to improve their equipment. This often disrupts the sense of a race because it gives the impression that the pros would rather be playing other content – even if it is necessary for their future advancement.
What do you think about split raiding or even the existence of these splits? Is it a good thing to be as efficient as possible? Or should Blizzard put a stop to it and not allow such gameplay at all?
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