wow Amirdrassil Race to World First, Day 0: Rollbacks, Suspensions and Region Switching

[Starym 3,725]

 

Well, the race hasn't even started yet and there's already plenty to talk about!  The Amirdrassil RWF starts in 12 hours as of this post, if NA maintenance goes to plan. However, two big pieces of news came in today that affect it, from exploits and suspensions to region hopping, so let's get to it.

The more recent news concerns those creative ways of farming Dream Warden Renown all the way up to 20 already. It seems some raiders got a bit too creative, as Blizzard reportedly handed out short suspensions and rolled back Renown progress to 8, including any rewards from higher levels. However, Wowhead reports that the 200% rep gain bonus was not removed and so re-gaining the Renown could be quite a bit easier - but I was unable to confirm that. I also won't be going into who exactly got affected.

The other big piece of news we've actually already covered, and it's the (seemingly) big announcement that Echo will be playing on NA servers. They've made a new guild, have characters ready in the region and will be playing the raid today. However, it's almost certain they will only be playing it there today. After the first day when EU players can't do much anyway, Echo will most likely be back to their original characters and progress the regular way as they always have. This can be concluded from the extreme emphasis on them playing on NA servers today and the fact that when asked how this would affect their split runs and helpers they said "not to worry about it".

But this is still a brand new development in the ever-evolving and ever-escalating competition between the top guilds. Echo will be giving the bosses some tries on the very first day of progress instead of waiting, wanting to get some more practice or to test out some strategies, rather than just watching streams of NA guilds. They won't be doing it for long, however, as the NA maintenance is scheduled to end at 8 PM CET and the EU raid opens at 5 AM CET, not really leaving a lot of room for playing without messing up sleep schedules. Not to mention if maintenance runs over.

So, that's pretty much it when it comes to the race prep. All that's left is for the guilds head into Amirdrassil today and... do a ridiculous amount of splits. We may see some kills by some lower ranked guilds as usual, but it's very likely none of the top guilds will be spending much time in Mythic. Echo might buck the trend, however, as they do not need any gear from the raid on their NA characters, so they may just grab a few early World Firsts just for the heck of it!

You can watch the top guild race streaming events here:

• Liquid
• Echo
• Method

And, as always, you can follow the race over on Raider.IO with live update posts, clips and more.

[Prophet001 479]

How is Echo raiding on NA even productive. Just seems like a publicity stunt. Haven't they already seen the bosses on PTR? How did they get characters geared up to Heroic or Mythic raid level? Wouldn't it make more sense to get some ilvl from Season 3 M+ drops?

I don't get it.

[Langoroth 3]

Because depending on the situation it will allow access to the last untested boss on one if not two difficulties, as well and getting timers and that down. Then going into to their mains, pushing up fast, and having more knowledge with their reset. 

[Starym 3,725]

5 hours ago, Prophet001 said:

How is Echo raiding on NA even productive. Just seems like a publicity stunt. Haven't they already seen the bosses on PTR? How did they get characters geared up to Heroic or Mythic raid level? Wouldn't it make more sense to get some ilvl from Season 3 M+ drops?

I don't get it.

It's not necessarily a big move or a huge help, but it can come in handy, as Langoroth already mentioned. Especially for day 1 when they can't do anything anyway (they got all their pre-raid farming done). As for the gearing up, that really doesn't sound like a problem when you have that many resources and extra raiders.