We’ve now had a little over two weeks to separate us from WoW Dragonflight’s latest Race to World First event in Aberrus, the Shadowed Crucible. Although Team Liquid emerged as the race’s winner, the discussion doesn’t stop there. With the game’s third raid set to arrive in the fall, there are at least five months until the next WoW RWF event.
In that time frame, it should be expected that plenty of talking points will emerge. From the relatively short length of the event to the staggered release of the raid, as well as the way it was balanced, Aberrus leaves WoW’s best raiding guilds (and their fans) with a lot to mull over before Patch 10.2 later this year.
Here are five of the biggest takeaways and talking points following the WoW Dragonflight Aberrus Race to World First.
Liquid proved they’ve still got it
Image via Blizzard Entertainment
Just as soon as Echo appeared to have a stranglehold on the competitive PvE scene, Liquid proved they’re still a force to be respected. While the guild—who won their first race since signing a multi-year deal with their new parent org last year—still has some ground to make up if they want to match Echo’s cross-expansion RWF three-peat, Liquid climbed the mountain for the first time in nearly three years. They proved to the world they’re more than the “B” in the “1A vs. 1B” debate between themselves and Echo.
Liquid made a relatively controversial decision to go dark halfway through their progression on the final boss, turning off all livestreams and data feeds to keep their strategy a secret from Echo and the rest of the world. During that time frame, Liquid perfected their strategy, practicing and progressing deep into the night, and deliberately only giving themselves four hours of sleep with the intention of winning it all early the next morning when the streams came back online.
The gamble paid off for Liquid as they came back the next morning and won the race within just a few hours. You can point toward that gutsy decision as not only the definitive turning point of the race but the biggest contributing reason for Liquid’s victory.
Next time, expect a three-horse race
Coming into this race, it was expected that Echo and Liquid would finish one-two in some order. But what was most surprising about the outcome is how competitive Method were as the race’s bronze medalist. Just a few hours after Echo and Liquid reached Sarkareth, Method were making progress on the final boss right alongside those top two guilds.
In combination with the disbursement of talent throughout the scene’s top guilds, as well as the disbanding of several guilds ahead of Dragonflight, Method have solidified themselves as the definitive third-strongest team in the world with their Aberrus performance. Heading into the expansion’s next raid, it’s likely that instead of discussing their chances to keep pace with Echo and Liquid, we’ll be talking about their chances to actually win a race—something the team hasn’t done since the Eternal Palace in 2019.
It might be time for a global release
World of Warcraft has always abided by a schedule: North America’s servers reset on Tuesdays and Europe’s reset on Wednesdays. While this schedule doesn’t have much of an effect on the week-to-week processes of the game, it has major implications when teams around the globe are racing each other to complete the newest content.
During this RWF, a major discrepancy occurred in regard to the time frames that the two frontrunners completed the race. Although Liquid were the clear winner of the event, defeating Scalecommander Sarkareth first, Echo spent less time in the raid and ultimately ran through Aberrus at a faster pace than Liquid, despite starting a day later.
Following the race, top brass from both teams traded barbs on social media, igniting the discussion around a simultaneous release for future raids. And while there are arguments both for and against a global release, the benefits of having everyone start from the same block when the game’s biggest esports title is on the line cannot be disputed.
Related: All but one class was used in Liquid’s WoW Race to World First-winning team composition
Even when ripped out of a WoW context, the idea of two entities racing each other—but one of them gets a 19-hour headstart—is foolish no matter how many justifications regarding split-raiding or strat-stealing you might have. Plus, the idea of all teams starting the race at the same time adds an extra element of hype to the event’s first day, which would bring higher viewership numbers to the early stages of the RWF, instead of the majority of the attention going toward its final moments.
It’s the age of the underdog
The first few days of the Aberrus race were dominated by lesser-known guilds as the scene’s top contenders all chose to run split raids during the first 48 hours of the event. This decision resulted in intrepid underdogs stealing the first four bosses of the race, with the Early Shift, Nerd Crew, and FatSharkYes (all of whom finished outside the top five) claiming world first kills.
Perhaps the most impressive outsider during the Aberrus race were Instant Dollars, a close-knit group of WoW veterans who took seventh overall in the race, improving on their eighth-place finish in the Vault of the Incarnates. Aberrus marked the fifth consecutive raid that Instant Dollars improved their standing from the previous race.
A short, undertuned race is better than a long, overtuned one
Long, epic Race to World First events that last well over two weeks and see hundreds of pulls on multiple bosses are interesting and fun on paper only. After seeing a well-tuned race take just under a week, it’s hard to imagine a world where the WoW scene would be welcoming of a race that goes into the third weekly reset ever again. With no in-race tuning changes to alter the outcome of the event (like there were during the Vault of the Incarnates race), Aberrus was a quick, clean raid that saw the world’s best teams take down the bosses as they were intended with little to no interference from Blizzard.
WoW Dragonflight will see its third (and possibly final) Race to World First event later this year when the game’s next raid releases alongside Patch 10.2.
