Mentioned in this article Teams: Limit Games: World of Warcraft

The following article is the final part of The Esports Observer’s coverage of Method’s latest World First raid race. For more details on the success of the event, and what raid racing is, click here for our previous coverage.

There was no single person who came up with the idea for Method to stream its race to become the first World of Warcraft guild to complete raids.

Though the first broadcasts came last fall, Method co-owner Sascha Steffens will says that the genesis of the idea wasn’t even new to the guild by the time it decided to execute it.

“We talked about potentially streaming as early as 2012 or something. It was more of a question about whether the guild wanted to stream or not,” Steffens said. “We’ve always put getting world first above streaming.”

Although streaming the world first race presented a unique business opportunity to the guild, being competitive and winning was the priority for Method founder and co-owner Scott “Sco” McMillan and his crew.

But after the team managed to grab a handful of world first raid finishes in the past couple of years, the guild wasn’t just looking to leverage its skill to prove its dominance. Method was searching for a new challenge.

“After getting world first a couple of times in [the last WoW expansion] Legion, obviously the next natural step was to up the challenge and get world first while streaming,” McMillan said. “That was actually a motivation itself for a lot of guys in the guild.”



“We talked about streaming many, many years ago, and it’s always been a ‘back of your mind’ kind of thought. But over time Twitch has kind of penetrated kind of all gaming scenes, all gaming communities.”

But going into the last raid, winning was still important, and both Method owners admitted that, had the event not ended in Method being world first, a stream might not have come this time around.

“If we wouldn’t have gotten world first the first time we streamed, there would have been a big chance that for this one now we not have live streamed in order to get world first back,” Steffens said. “That discussion was there…That risk was there.”

Where’s the Competition?

Though a few guilds like Wild Card Gaming allowed players to stream their raiding efforts during this month, no one was even remotely close to matching the success in viewership that Method achieved.

Additionally, Method’s biggest competition, Limit, did not stream its efforts, choosing instead to focus strictly on getting world first than trying to profit off of a potential business opportunity.

But McMillan isn’t surprised by that. For another guild to come out and stream, there needs to be more competition, and the circumstances need to be just right. To put it simply, streaming is a disadvantage.

If someone shows their guild having success, there’s a chance that others will see their attempts and steal the strategies that made them successful. Any lead that they gained is mitigated by others being able to copy them.

“You can go 200 [attempts] on a boss and then realize, ‘wait, I can save 10 seconds or 20 seconds in phase one of the fight by doing X,’” McMillan said. “Then whoever is watching your stream will convert that into their strategy. … Now all of a sudden the lead that you have is less significant.”

In order to truly capitalize off of streaming during a raid race, McMillan believes that top guilds like Limit need to beat Method first.

“For another guild to come out and stream and also try to take that world first from Method, it would be a very difficult proposition,” McMillan said. “For the guilds like Limit it’s actually beneficial for them to at least claim the belt first before they consider taking on the additional step.”



McMillan did admit that there could be some degree of value North American guilds could get from streaming a raid though. Because of a staggered release of content by Blizzard Entertainment , North American guilds would be able to stream the raid race for roughly a day before Method even had access to it.

“With the one day head start, that stream alone would get a large audience for sure,” he said.

But that one day head start would also give Method the advantage of watching all of Limit’s successful strategies. Any lead that Limit had would go away faster than they got it.

Is a Blizzard on the Way?

Because of Blizzard’s staggered release of raid content, Steffens and many others have expressed frustration with the developer as the raid race’s grassroots effort attempts to thrive.

When WoW expansions come out, everyone across the globe receives content all at once, but for raids, different regions get the content at different times creating an uneven playing field for people who see the race as an esport.

“Leveling the playing field for example by releasing the raid at the same time in every region would help this competition a lot. It would make this competition a lot more legitimate,” Steffens said. “That alone would be a massive help, and I think, sufficient to keep on growing this competition.”

Steffens has been openly critical in the past about Blizzard’s lack of support for the raid race as an esports, but he cut the game developer some slack saying that there is no way Blizzard could have expected the raid race to be what it is now. It wasn’t originally intended to be an esport when WoW came out 14 years ago.

Congratulations @Methodgg on world first completion of Mythic Battle of Dazar'alor. pic.twitter.com/WUDayPSXXd — World of Warcraft (@Warcraft) February 5, 2019

“It’s questionable to begin with if Blizzard getting involved would make things bigger all of a sudden,” Steffens said. “I’m not sure if they got involved right now that they could make it a much bigger event [than it is currently]. The product would be the same with or without Blizzard’s involvement really.”

Ultimately, the freedom that Method has by cultivating this grassroots effort into a business opportunity is liberating for Steffens. He said that having a developer too involved in the competitive esports has the potential to affect competition in a negative way.

“Their main priority as a business isn’t esports,” he said. “They’re a game publisher first so their business is selling games. So I’ve always seen it as a problem for the entire power to come from someone who doesn’t have esports as their main priority.”

Both McMillan and Steffens believe that there is more Blizzard could do to further the raid race just by promoting it more though. McMillan admitted that Method had discussions to get a member of the WoW development team on for an interview during the raid race streams. However, the plan fell through and other than that, McMillan said that little to no support has been given for the race.

“I’d definitely like to see some more promotion from the World of Warcraft team,” McMillan said. “We’re doing so much promotion for the game itself…It’s a little bit unfortunate that we get so little support in return.”

A New Environment

The future of the WoW world first raid race is unclear. However for Method, these past two raids are just the beginning, and Steffens believes its growth shows the potential for the player-vs-environment origins of esports.

“No one has really thought about this in esports really,” Steffens said. “But actually if you think really far back you could say, ‘what about the really early arcade games, something like Donkey Kong or Pacman, where it was about achieving a high score?’”



Though no other guilds currently possess the power to stream and compete with Method simultaneously, Steffens expressed excitement at the potential for a world where a world first race could be streamed across the globe by numerous high-profile competitors at once.