World of Warcraft's Race to World First is a big piece of the game's competitive scene, and the Ny'alotha raid has ended with a North American guild taking the World First title for the first time in 10 years.
The final chapter in the Battle for Azeroth expansion, Visions of N'Zoth, has players adventure to the Waking City of Ny'alotha and into a confrontation with the Old God N'Zoth. From here World of Warcraft's story will shift to the late-2020 Shadowlands expansion, announced at BlizzCon last year.
World First is the ultimate prize in WoW raiding, where guilds race to be the first to complete a mythic raid by challenging increasingly more powerful bosses. Guilds will repeatedly attempt the raid, implementing a number of different strategies and slowly figuring out the optimal way to achieve success. With N'Zoth on the ropes, North American guild Complexity Limit whittled down the last remaining health of the Old God to claim the World First on their 274th attempt at the raid.
Limit has been runner-up to EU guild Method a number of times, making this win is a breakthrough for them, and for the North American WoW scene. The last time a North American guild won a World First was in 2010 when the guild Premonition took down the boss Halion.
Guild member Max says about their new status as top guild "you can't remain complacent... now that we're in that spot, it's going to take more work than ever to stay there, and we're ready for that." Their new place at the top has also resulted in huge numbers of new Twitch followers for the guild members.
World of Warcraft is no stranger to having a large presence on Twitch, where controversial WoW streamer Asmongold tallied the most hours viewed on Twitch in Q3 of last year. But unlike the casual streams or other World of Warcraft esport events like the PvP Arena World Championships, raiding has long stayed away from the spotlight. The reason for this being that guilds did not want their strategies to be seen—and potentially stolen—by other guilds.
But with the release of Battle of Azaroth, Method took a different approach to their World First attempts and began streaming their raids. This started off a chain reaction with other guilds, including Limit, streaming their raids as well. This move has allowed more fans to witness the action live, and during this quest for World First, over 100,000 watched on Twitch as N'Zoth went down.
For casual players, Visions of N'Zoth will still offer plenty new features that many are likely just diving into. For Complexity, their attention will shift to Shadowlands and their next attempt at a World First. Only time will tell if they will be able to hold onto the crown.
World of Warcraft is available now for PC.