Is there a real point to world firsts?

[Torrasque]

It only matter to those that want to care about it, which is a very minor few to begin with.

[Regalbeast]

No, I doubt they get any sort of financial benefit. Not enough people care.

[Kazgrel]

Well...someone has to be the first to clear it. Given some of the absurd time/commitment requirements I've seen/heard for such progression, though, that tends to kill the appeal a bit. While I have not personally been in the world first race, I was often in the thick of server first races (which were the ones I was much more interested in), but those days are long over, too.

[IceMan1763]

Legion (specifically changes to where the most powerful gear can be acquired) changed the dynamic of how raids are tuned which shifted an already unbalanced playing field from WOD into a massively unbalanced, and thus, massively unfair competitive landscape when it comes to high end raiding and world firsts. If there's one thing gamers don't like, it's a game that wants to be an esport but is clearly unsuitable because the playing field is imbalanced. Just ask any gamer their opinion on Battlefront 2 if you don't believe me.

In Cataclysm and previous xpacs, the necessary gear to beat the final bosses of the raid tier would be primarily acquired from beating the first and middle bosses in the raid tier. In Legion, I think it is/would have been entirely possible for a group of skilled players to beat the final boss of each raid tier without using one item from that current raid tier. This would be especially true if you allowed the players to use gear from the current raid, but only lesser difficulties and not pieces acquired from Mythic.

Here are the changes which have occurred between Cata and now which have worked to unbalance the playing field for Mythic raiding:
1) The introduction of WF and TF and, with Legion, the ridiculous range at which they can proc
2) Legiondaries
3) Max level grindy character progression which provide significant power boosts
4) Both #1 and #2 and no sane changes to how loot can be traded between characters making split raiding INCREDIBLY lucrative from a power acquisition standpoint

The reason people cared about it so much more previously was because the lack of these types of imbalances really did make progression primarily about skill. Being able to properly tune raid bosses so that the raids can't be cleared in a week or two max meant that guilds who went to crazy amount of hours during progression saw a much smaller advantage compared to what can be gained from those hours in today's game. Time has been converted from an asset which really just got you some extra attempts during the week previously to an asset so valuable that grinding more Artifact Points as opposed to actually attempting/practicing the boss would have been a more effective strategy for progress for the majority of guilds in Legion.

Now, some fanbois might be saying something like "You can't solve split raiding.... they tried!!". Get over yourself. They didn't "try" anything. They placated the playerbase is what they did. Here... let me prove it to you with one rule:

The current Mythic raid will not grant any stats from gear acquired from lesser difficulties of the same raid for the first 2 months (or so). Boom. Split raiding is dead. Was that really so hard?

Now for the fanbois who come around saying that rule would be unfair... aren't you the same guy who said Mythic raiders are only 1% of the playerbase and the game would be better off without them anyway? What do you care? If you're one of those 1%, can you with a straight face tell me you wouldn't be happy to see split raiding die?

[Deavane]

I find it pretty unbelievable that any top end guild that races for world firsts do not get any financial support from sponsors. Sure, the race to world first is great and all that is it's own reward, but I don't know how long that would sustain the roster.

Then again, there are guilds that land rank 10 or rank 20 that put in a lot of effort, but have no sponsors.

Not sure if this allowed (please mods edit my post if need be), but even without financial support from sponsors, these guilds are making money (real currency) via other players for carries. At the world first level, a single run can be several thousand US dollars.

[Triggered Fridgekin]

Nearly every facet of our lives involves folks losing their shit for being the first so there should be no surprise that it also includes raiding.

[clevin]

Not really. The problem is that it takes so much to be competitive for 1st that only a very few people in the world can and will put in that effort. If there were money for the top 10 you'd see a more competitive race but really, it's between 2-3 guilds.

one of the great things about most sports is that teams can come up from the middle to challenge the best if they recruit, etc. But in the WF race as it is, you have so many split run/M+/AP/TF/Legendary issues that it takes a LOT of effort to move up a few places and since WoW isn't a lucrative esport... why put that effort in unless you're really really invested in WF? If I were a top skilled gamer I'd look at DOTA, Overwatch etc where being decent (by decent I mean top 10 or 20) can still pay off financially. IF I didn't care about financial payoff, I can't see myself putting in the time and effort needed for WoW WF.

[Trickname]

They provide a vital service. How else will we know every raid is undertunned?

[goukendrake]

I actually think it can lead to financial benefit. You post up a Twitch stream as a World First raider, people are going to probably watch just based on that. Especially during farm clears. Guys who are in Method like Fragnance, RogerBrown, Sco, they don't have a "day job", they're professional WoW players because of their twitch streams.

[tkioz]

No. In fact I'd argue its a detriment to the game. It's these assholes that get classes nerfed by abusing systems.

[Flurryfang]

I'm not discrediting any guild for putting in all the heavy work. All I wanna know is whether there's an actual return on their investment and I don't mean a sense of short-lived glory and virtual dominance, more like financial reinforcement from sponsors. I have a friend who used to raid with Serenity and he told me it's all about the thrill of competition.

Most people simply do it for the rush and for the prize of being the first. Guilds like method do it as part of their image build up and Sco from method has made a living out of it.

Being world first gives you a huge board to advertise your own guild with and being visible means, that advertisers love to make deals with you.

Edit: But outside of just having fun and get fame, their is no income from it.... But then again, i don't think anybody in the top 50 does it because of anything other then being hardcore and wanting to be the best.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Simple answer: No
Long answer: The top guilds sell boosts for real money, and use their "world first raider!"-titles, or even participation in the race, for advertisement to prove their worth. Not sure if Method has a zero-tolerance policy to it, but alas...

Pretty sure every single world first race guild has people that either actively participate in, or have participated in real money boosts.

- - - Updated - - -

Considering world firsts seem right now to happen within a week of a raid being released...yeah.

Kil'jaeden says hello.

Also: Number of wipes before a kill > amounts of weeks that a raid remains uncleared considering the teams these days go to extreme lengths to increase their chances.

[Kokolums]

When blizzard destroyed the in game community in wrath it kinda made world firsts meaningless. No one cares. Being social adds meaning to wow. When everyone hides from others and just autoqueues for randoms the game loses meaning.

[IceMan1763]

Also: Number of wipes before a kill > amounts of weeks that a raid remains uncleared considering the teams these days go to extreme lengths to increase their chances.

There is actually a BIG difference between these two scenarios when it comes to raid tuning. If number of wipes is the main determining factor, that insinuates gear from that raid instance is really not necessary to defeat the fight. This describes Legion... you can get a long way progression wise even if you don't have any gear from the current raid instance.

A raid taking several weeks (or even months) to clear indicates a raid that is "well tuned" in the way that long time players of this game understand. Later bosses within the raid take several weeks of gear from that same raid to be able to defeat. My previous post explains the phenomena in more detail, but it has to do with the necessary raid wide power to defeat a fight and where that power is acquired from. In Legion, most of the power was attained through a MASSIVE time investment in order to gain the maximum number of chances at good TF procs or good Legiondary rolls. Most of this power is also attainable without even being in a raid instance or through clearing the raid at a difficulty which is significantly lower than Mythic.

[Nnyco]

Considering world firsts seem right now to happen within a week of a raid being released...yeah.

mostly because its a skill check now rather than a gear check how most bosses were in vanilla/tbc

[IceMan1763]

mostly because its a skill check now rather than a gear check how most bosses were in vanilla/tbc

I completely disagree... I think it's at least 60-70% a time investment check and the rest a skill check at this point. The grindy nature of Legion (especially related to Mythic raiding) actually locked a lot of guilds who were skilled enough out of the race and pushed a lot of skilled players out of the game and into ones that respect their time more. It was much more about skill in the Wrath/Cata era in my opinion than it is now.

[Eazy]

Is there a real point in olympics?