Absolutely insane! Just over an hour after the new WotLK raids opened in WoW Classic, the first guilds have already taken them all down. Their secret weapon: Death Knights.
Who got the First Kills? Exactly one hour, 4 minutes and 19 seconds after the opening of Naxxramas, the Obsidian Sanctum, and the Eye of Eternity, the European Horde guild BEEF BAR from the Gehennas server has taken down all 3 raids. This made them just seconds faster than the competition:
- Progress (Alliance, Firemaw EU) – 1h 5min 56s
- Statement (Horde, Venoxis EU) – 1h 11min 23s
- Noobs (Horde, 震地者 China) – 1h 14min 33s
The raids opened exactly at midnight, and just over an hour later, the Race to World First for all three instances was already over. Statement, in 3rd place, is also the best German guild. For comparison:
- The first 3 raids in TBC Classic lasted 24 hours
- Ragnaros in Vanilla Classic survived for several days – here players had to level up first
Death Knights as the Key to Victory
How did they do it? All top guilds relied on Death Knights, the new class in WotLK. The plate wearers are among the strongest DPS classes currently. While some guilds used a mix of Frost and Unholy Death Knights, BEEF BAR used 10 Unholy Death Knights.
Their special ability to summon a Gargoyle was, according to calculations from wowhead, responsible for over 19 million damage points alone. In addition, the guilds utilized several game mechanics:
- World buffs like Sayge’s Dark Fortune of Damage from the Darkmoon Faire and Soul Resurrection
- “Bootsweaving” and “Gloveweaving”
An early trailer for WotLK Classic introduces the new Death Knight class:
The “weaving” mechanics are about exploiting engineering. With the profession, you can give gloves and boots special abilities. The players brought several pairs of these to chain the abilities together.
Of course, a large portion of experience comes into play. Wrath of the Lich King is 14 years old, and many players have practiced on private servers for years or farmed the instances solo. Accordingly, no one had to relearn the strategies.
For the raids, the guilds had to level their players to 80, but even that happened just a few hours after the release of WotLK. While the “normal” player takes several weeks, the experts rush through the game in no time.
The community is annoyed by the elitist thoughts of many players in WoW Classic and calls for enjoying WotLK in peace instead. Nevertheless, the performance of the guilds is impressive.
More Raids and Dungeons in the Future
What’s next? After the opening of Naxxramas, the Obsidian Sanctum, and the Eye of Eternity, further phases with content will follow:
- Ulduar
- Trial of the Crusader and Onyxia’s Lair as well as the Argent Tournament.
- Icecrown Citadel and further heroic dungeons
- Ruby Sanctum
However, we don’t know exactly when these phases will appear. Concrete dates are still missing.
If you missed the big release, that’s not a problem. As you can see, a ton of new content is still coming, and those who want to join later actually have some advantages:
