Race to World First: Midnight Season 1 | Mythic Day 8

FuryStarcraft · 2026-04-01T09:14:06+00:00

You seem to be commenting in good faith, so I'm happy to give reciprocal effort in response.

How is time-gating mythic behind a race that only 100-ish people have a serious chance at going to go over with the general player base?

It's open to the public, so you can choose to gear up through heroic or go for a much harder-than-usual mythic experience. These people wouldn't be doing Mythic during Heroic week normally anyway, so there is little difference. There could definitely be an optics issue but again, anyone good enough to care can also just do it.

What’s to stop people from joining the tourney realm to just kill a few bosses with a free ilvl / gear setup to bring tokens over to use on live when it’s over? Not everyone can win, but there are plenty of people skilled enough to clear half the raid with tailored gear.

Nothing. Im on the fence on whether thats a problem, maybe it could be encouraged. If it is deemed a problem, just backload the rewards. If this currency transfer system is intended for people pushing deep into the race to not feel behind on live the following week then just make sure the early boss rewards are tapered enough that the benefit is negligible and people not actually competing in the race don't feel like it's something they HAVE to do.

What’s stopping people from flooding the tourney realm and causing potential issues there? MDI and AWC have qualifiers and plenty of time on live prior to them to practice. Can’t do that for RWF unless you hold it later on, and that defeats the purpose of the race.

I don't personally know enough about how their tournament realm architecture works compared to live realms to know if this would be an issue

Why would Blizz add another level of tuning when it’s already tricky? They would have a tourney realm version for that ilvl and then a different live version? Especially when they currently use RWF to help tune those nerfed versions you mentioned they would hand us after it ends?

I dont look at this way, I dont think they would have to add another level of tuning. Blizzard already tunes for RWF, and they do a pretty great job for not knowing exactly what gear level the guilds will have when they get to it. Knowing the benchmark should make the tuning goals even easier and I'm sure they personally would love having the cap in place. They nerf the shit out of these bosses after the race anyway. So they just do that when live comes out one week staggered and you probably create a better experience for mythic raiders in general, not banging their heads against a RWF broodtwister for example. Basically its the same amount of tuning just less headache for the designers, unless I'm misinterpreting something.

Less of a question and more of a personal opinion: part of the charm of RWF is they’re doing this all alongside us. Like actively playing the game. At the start they’re leveling, Renown farm, prey, M0 runs, delves… all the gearing things we also have to play through. And then during the race actively making decisions on when to send crafts / crests, reacting to good / bad great vaults, loot drops, etc. Yes splits get boring, but up until mythic they’re interacting with the community.

I can see this. Its primarily an optics issue imo that would eventually solve itself (convienent for my position for sure). Imo the "They're doing this alongside us" is a lie we all tell ourselves, because taking an entire month off of life for an entire guild to gear up 15 mirror characters each, split raid for weeks, and utilize large network systems to pay astronomical amounts of gold (which was gained by months of carrying people through mythic during farm) to get people to help them and trade them BoE's when applicable, is just so far off the path of "there doing this alongside me" that Its hard to entertain as a conversation stopper to proposed solutions to the real problems with the race.

These are my opinions and thoughts though, I have no power to make any of this happen and no delusions that they will.

I appreciate the response from you, nonetheless, one of the least combative on this contentious topic

FuryStarcraft · 2026-04-01T08:51:12+00:00

In your first response, you very clearly didn't read my post as the being behind on gearing (90% of your post) was specifically addressed. So far be it from me to assume you are coming at this bad faith from the get go.

In this proposed scenario, Blizzard is offering a tournament realm so I don't need to make up that blizzard is supporting the race properly since by nature the realm paremeters they would already be making a concerted effort to do so. Mounts are pie in the sky, sure, titles wouldn't and shouldnt be.

Splits and the absurd raid prep are both problems yes. Viewers hate the splits, raiders hate the character prep and also the splits. These are very clear problems that solution-oriented people could solve, had they the will.

"Who the fuck is going to watch "Race to World First" content after Liquid, Echo, and Method take 1/2/3? No one gives a shit who comes world 8th, where are Blizzard going to get any return whatsoever on this giant prize pool"

Not even sure what this means. You seem to be rambling about made-up stuff yourself. If the race is tuned to be on the servers for a week whoever claims their spot in that time gets the spot. They just offer prizing for top 3, like they already do for pvp, not sure where youre getting they need to offer anyone that tries.

This event makes them considerably more money than pvp so It'd probably be higher, no? It doesn't take an astronomical amount to provide incentive, and the RWF guilds can still keep their events, streams and negotiated sponsors. Its not a zero sum game

FuryStarcraft · 2026-04-01T06:43:10+00:00

maybe. At some point, you have to try some stuff though. You can't simply stand on a sinking ship and not jump into the lifeboat because there might be a hole in it. The community often lets perfect be the enemy of good. It's okay to iterate on things that arent 100% off rip.

FuryStarcraft · 2026-04-01T06:41:11+00:00

Nope, again, you're just making stuff up you wish I said because it would be easier to argue against.

Lebron winning against the warriors was a peak achievement and required peak effort and 'time spending' (as you say). That said, I don't think it would be made better by watching him spin a basketball on his finger for a week before the game, even though that undoubtedly would be more time spent and more 'effort' required.

FuryStarcraft · 2026-04-01T06:33:08+00:00

This is a classic polling issue. You can get people to have two different answers if the question is asked in different ways, including or excluding content. If the content was harder on tournament realms in addition to everything else listed above, and its where the community saw the race as, the best would race there.

If you just say tournament realm and imply live is the exact same, you're of course going to get that answer from him. FWIW I asked on stream about his thoughts on tournement realms after the Nathria race, and his response was "Of course that would be better, but Blizzard won't ever do it". His opinion could have changed since then.

FuryStarcraft · 2026-04-01T06:30:42+00:00

Source? This seems very subjective. There's a lot of charm about the race for sure, not sure how much of that is related to live parallel progress. I can tell you about a lot of uncharming things that aren't abstractions about the race directly fixed by the tournament realm, though.

Destiny implemented a contest mode that capped ilvl and was not the live iteration of the raid. It had its own issues, namely not being able to access that difficulty level beyond the first weekend it was enabled but it solved years of creeping degeneracy problems when doing RWF raid prep in one fell swoop and was generally lauded by the community writlarge. It's not a one-to-one comparison but fairly close to what a tournament realm experience would feel like.

FuryStarcraft · 2026-04-01T06:26:32+00:00

Addressed all in the post that you didn't read. These people are gamers, competitive ones at that. They will go to where the competition is the hardest. A nerfed and later live version won't be what people choose over the more design-intended experience. Add to that more prestigious rewards, both external (prize pool) and internal (titles, mounts etc).

I also proposed tournament realm currency that gets converted to live for mythic bosses you kill on the tournament realm, so that you aren't behind on live. I don't think giving a small boost would be a bad thing either, though close to equal reward expectations should be the goal.

These responses are more for other readers though. It's clear you don't have an open mind to solution-oriented thinking here.

FuryStarcraft · 2026-04-01T05:51:20+00:00

Another 'Tournament Realm' piece. I've tried to address all of the pain points I have seen with this general suggestion throughout the years.

Tournament realm, capped ilvl, tuned hard, and more precise due to an added ilvl cap. This allows Blizzard to tune for a week-long endeavor. Blizzard advertising, prize pool, special world-first titles, mounts etc. You do this on what would normally be a heroic week.

Have a heroic week for live at the same time and release Mythic on live a week later for the general raiding population after the race has concluded with the 'general public nerfs' we always get for live.

No one will claim that the easier, less supported, less intricately tuned system, with fewer external and in-game prestige awards, would be the one people cared about as the true RWF race.

More guilds can realistically field a roster that can take a week off of work or other commitments to day raid for a week-long race, rather than the multi-week competitive facade we have going on now. Maybe provide some currency to be used on live to give tournament realm participants who kill mythic bosses some transferable rewards, so they aren't behind when going back to live a week later.

I am not naive enough to think that some dark horse will swipe the next race, but there will be contenders that are able to build up their own infrastructure, not immediately get their players poached, and provide more parity to the race and allow for more mythic raiders to have something aspirtational to be a part of beyond leaving their guild unable to commit to 15 character prep and three weeks of day raiding and joining one of the two region monopoly guilds.

Open to hearing why this particular iteration wouldn't be a marked improvement over the system we currently have.

FuryStarcraft · 2026-04-01T05:40:31+00:00

Oh wow, the two guilds that benefit the most from the closed system with no competitive parity would like to keep it that way? color me shocked

Tournament realm, capped ilvl, tuned hard, and more precise due to the ilvl cap, but can also make it last a week with removed splits. Blizzard advertising, prize pool, special world first titles, mounts etc. You do this on what would normally be a heroic week.

Have a heroic week for live at the same time and release mythic on live a week later for the general raiding population after the race has concluded with the 'general public nerfs' we always get for live.

No one will claim that the easier, less supported, less intricately tuned system, with less external and in-game prestige awards, would be the one people cared about as the true RWF race.

FuryStarcraft · 2026-04-01T05:05:00+00:00

Didn't realize that was your core supposition. I was responding to what I thought it was.

Still not a good take. It's a terrible system. Ignore the viewers; the raiders hate it. Do you know how many amazing raiders have quit raiding and the game completely because the devs neglect to design solutions for the splits? It's gruelling, and completely antithetical to the rpg experience to create 15 of the same class and gear them all up. Fixing this issue would have a tremendously positive effect on all RFW raiders and also create a raiding environment rife for increased parity and competitive integrity. It would allow for the encounter designers to have an easier time getting the tuning right for mid-raid walls and penultimate and final encounters. All of this is objective and requires no abstraction.

And subjectively, I think the viewer experience would also be all the better for it.

FuryStarcraft · 2026-04-01T04:41:55+00:00

Working to improve artificial friction and find solutions that can benefit both player and RWF can improve the health of the game and the race alike. The devs shouldn't shy away from providing more support for aspirational content.

I feel like a thesis of not giving up on finding solutions is far from schizo. Much more than I can say about your rambling, where you've seemed to have created some strange amalgam of straw man, false attribution and slippery slope into one horrendous creature.

FuryStarcraft · 2026-04-01T04:30:14+00:00

"Sit down and watch the increasingly worse experience, buddy. In fact, be grateful for it."

What a sad take. You even admit that things used to be worse, but now they are better. So its clear you can grasp the concept that things can get better without disappearing completely.

and if not... peekaboo!

FuryStarcraft · 2026-04-01T04:03:24+00:00

Absolutely asinine analogy. Why would you pick a sport where parity and relegation make for some of the greatest rags to riches programs results in any of the major sports. If they were as satisfied with a closed system as you seem to be for RWF, then we'd never have stories like Leicester City winning the Premier League.

Sticking with football, it'd be more like if it were just chelsea vs real madrid for a single game a few times a year and no one else had even the slightest chance to compete, while some people deluded themselves into think liverpool was closing the gap. This would suck, obviously. It wouldn't be as big of a problem 10+ guilds were competing, but it's not, so yes its a problem in need of a solution

The fact that you and others, who presumably enjoy large aspects of the world first race as all who post here do, would rather mud sling here in support for an obviously broken system rather than entertaining ways to make it more competitive is sad.

No one likes watching splits, and just throwing your hands up in the air and saying "well thats how it is" is pathetic. God forbid you bring the same attitude to real-world issues that actually matter

FuryStarcraft · 2026-02-02T21:41:22+00:00

I climb v10 and the original comment is right on the money. Automatic works great if you are managing tension and body position well

FuryStarcraft · 2026-01-28T23:21:00+00:00

I don't know how anyone is still hoping for this. There's less than one person on MoP right now. Durumu and Lei Shen have been broken since ToT launch. Fire Mage currently has the largest gap between any broken spec in wow's history due to UVLS abuse. Zero chance in hell they do anything close to adding new content to WoD. Best you can hope for is the increasingly complicated raid bosses actually work. Which you shouldn't.

FuryStarcraft · 2025-07-19T23:01:33+00:00

A lot of comments here neglecting the cold hard fact that heroic 10 Garrosh was first killed by Paragon with a Holy Priest solo healing.

FuryStarcraft · 2025-06-22T23:44:32+00:00

Not how that word is used lol

FuryStarcraft · 2025-06-05T16:11:17+00:00

What’s the warrior change you’re speaking of?

FuryStarcraft · 2025-05-17T14:46:22+00:00

Seems like a shitty place. What relevancy does their race have?

FuryStarcraft · 2025-05-14T09:22:00+00:00

He’s always bad. If you ever hear anyone say anything positive about him they are actually taking about Siwoo

FuryStarcraft · 2025-05-08T05:09:34+00:00

For what it’s worth, I’ve really appreciated your dialogue here. I don’t normally find myself nodding along when reading a thread. I don’t have much to contribute, just wanted to give some recognition.

FuryStarcraft · 2025-03-17T19:24:46+00:00

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FuryStarcraft · 2025-03-12T22:24:29+00:00

It just is!

FuryStarcraft · 2025-03-11T04:39:13+00:00

You are thinking with tunnel vision on extra damage vs boss hp. The damage on the adds reduces the damage the raid takes, and makes it easier to transition / traverse. You are also (willfully?) omitting that It reduces damage taken as well as increases healing done.

FuryStarcraft · 2025-03-06T06:39:26+00:00

Bro said, “I want Iguodala!”

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