wow The Raid Race During the Holidays: the Top Guilds Speak Up

[Starym 3,800]

 

With the recent announcement of the Shadowlands raid release schedule we found out that the race to World First will be starting on December 15th (16th for EU and 17th for Asia), which means that it will bump up against the holidays. Even if the raid doesn't turn out to be that hard and the first kill is done in 1 reset, everyone but the very top guilds will still be progressing over the holidays, and if it's an average difficulty, even the No.1 will get extremely close/overlap with them.

Raider.IO poked many top guilds from all three regions to see what their attitudes towards the situation are, and the responses were quite fascinating, as the release date might actually be a hidden advantage for Asian guilds, as they do not celebrate these particular holidays! The interview covers Complexity Limit, Echo, Pieces, Jitianhong, Alpha, Skyline, Exorsus, BDGG and Lazarus Imperative.

Most Western guilds talk about having expected the raid/race to be delayed into January and that having been the best option, and they're not too happy with how it turned out. On the Asia side of things the guilds are actually very happy with the development, as they have been forced to race during the Chinese New Year in the past.

Quote

Erxi - 阿尔法 Alpha: In my opinion, the delay of Shadowlands has been a bit too long. It's been quite boring for us due to no new content. The Christmas holiday doesn't mean as much to us as it does to Western players, so having the Mythic progression around the Christmas holiday basically has little to no impact on us. After all, we were kind of used to raiding during Chinese New Year...

Melody - 天涯 Skyline: My first impression was, “Thank God it finally comes!” The delay wasn't too bad for us, but it surely messed up our previous plan a little bit. Since the Covid situation in China has been pretty much under control for a couple of months now, we were planning to bring most of our players to an offline bootcamp for this tier, so we have already booked hotels in advance. Because of the delay, we have to make some re-arrangements. Christmas holiday has pretty much no impact on our guild since it's not a traditional Chinese holiday anyway, but for myself it does because it's my birthday. Hopefully I can celebrate my birthday with my friends and guildmates after we have finished the race!

Some Western guilds are definitely going to be losing at least a few raiders due to the situation, as getting time off for the race and the holidays hard to do. The full interview also goes into the difficulty of the raid and how fast the guilds expect it to be cleared, actual player availability and a lot more in-depth on the whole topic in general, so make sure to check it out.

Unless Castle Nathria turns out to be an Emerald Nightmare-like dissappointing first tier and is cleared very quickly, there may be some serious advantages to be had for the Asian guilds this time around, perhaps enough to offset the significant delay to their raid release (as they get the Mythic raid even later than EU servers, due to the regional resets).

[Recool 26]

Funny, maybe an Asian Guild wins ? ? 

[Senou 40]

I never knew chinese guilds or rather asian guilds do compete with the others for world first. I know that their experience with the game and how the game's support and such is handled differently. This might shake things up. Imagine some mostly unknown chinese guilds wins the race instead of the big shots. Would be fun to see.

[Oreoxd 165]

2 hours ago, Senou said:

I never knew chinese guilds or rather asian guilds do compete with the others for world first. I know that their experience with the game and how the game's support and such is handled differently. This might shake things up. Imagine some mostly unknown chinese guilds wins the race instead of the big shots. Would be fun to see.

If I remember correctly asian servers are like... 2 days behind on raid releases? And they've still managed to compete. Even back in Wrath there were a few well known asian guilds, STARS being one of the more prominent ones.

[SidonisAntares 290]

10 hours ago, Oreoxd said:

If I remember correctly asian servers are like... 2 days behind on raid releases? And they've still managed to compete. Even back in Wrath there were a few well known asian guilds, STARS being one of the more prominent ones.

Oh man I remember them, they made up for the 2 day delay FAST, and pressured Ensidia hard. They also got world first Alone in the Darkness (25 player)  , finished Ulduar world second behind Ensidia, ahead of Paragon, Premonition, Method, etc.

Edited November 9, 2020 by SidonisAntares