Limit & Method ahead in the RWF: Azshara’s Eternal Palace

The World of Warcraft community is locked in their seats as Queen Azshara remains the final obstacle in the Race to World First.

Race to World First (RWF) is an unofficial event taking place every time a new piece of content is released in World of Warcraft. The players from the most dedicated guilds around the globe drop their daily routines and real life obligations and sit down in front of their screens for weeks on out in order to be the first guild globally that defeats the new content on the highest difficulty.

The trend dates back nearly 14 years and has evolved massively over the years to now encompass guilds and players from all around the world from Europe to North America to China and Korea. Near the end of 2018, Red Bull stood in support of the players and organized a 24/7 event at the Red Bull Gaming Sphere London. The European guild Method was the first to be featured in a such a fashion and nearly 200,000 people tuned in to watch them defeat Uldir’s Ghuun on Mythic Difficulty.

The partnership between Red Bull Esports and Method continued for future content releases within World of Warcraft up until recently, until Method announced they would be breaking ties with Red Bull and continue on their path alone.

The future of the Race to World First and why Method is not working /w Red Bull Read: https://t.co/ySObKKKfgg — Scott McMillan (@Methodsco) July 6, 2019

Red Bull promptly announced they would be hosting their own event called World First featuring two North American guilds (Limit, Pieces) at the Gaming Sphere and another eight guilds globally and off-site.

Announcing World First featuring @PiecesGuild, @LimitGuild at the Gaming Sphere and 8 guilds offsite. + a high quality 24/7 stream, 30+ raiders on site and amazing casters! Find out more here: https://t.co/ozRGSQTWMu Good luck to all guilds trying to get World First. pic.twitter.com/7pMXbkW68F — Red Bull Gaming (@redbullgaming) July 11, 2019

And now here we are… For the past 7 days spectators have been shifting between the official Red Bull twitch stream and Method’s live coverage in order to keep up with the race.

Seven out of the eight bosses in Azshara’s Eternal Palace have been defeated. North America’s Limit claiming “firsts” on four of them. Method took down two and one went to Big Dumb Guild. Now the race has begun for the guild that will claim the World First: Azshara and the bragging rights as the top raiding guild in the world.

# Guild Region 1 Limit United States 2 Method Europe 3 佶天鸿 China 4 Pieces Europe 5 AFK R Korea

There is much at stake in this race. As the drama around who gets to organize the World First events intensifies and guilds are hard at work in defeating this content tier, the future of one of the oldest community driven competitions possibly lies in the result of the race.

Tune in at Twitch.tv/redbull or Twitch.tv/method to support your preferred guild.

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