"World First" is an epic achievement in World of Warcraft but some players disagree. We take a look at the culture and controversy surrounding the world and realm firsts in WoW.

There is a game within a game in World of Warcraft that I like to dub “first.” We see it played on many of a forum and comment boards as posters say “first!” as they, themselves, hit the “first” reply to something. It all boils down to our natural human instinct to be competitive and in WoW this boils down to the first to complete a dungeon, hit a certain level, or max a certain tradeskill. It comes in two forms, the first the harmless e-sports “world firsts” and the more, a bit crazier, realm firsts.

Now, a lot of players don’t necessarily care one way or another who does what first. We call this the “casual ignorance” of something that doesn’t really matter. On the other hand, there are a lot of opinionated players on why world and realm firsts are a horrible thing for the game and the achievements should be ripped out of the game as those achievements only apply to “losers” and “lame people”. While others believe there should be more “first!” style achievements in the hopes that they could get in on a slice of the pie.

The Very First

Since we’re talking about the first of everything, let’s hop into the history time machine and take a look at where this trend began. A long time ago in an Azeroth far far away the dungeons were way too difficult for mortals to complete. The first example of a dungeon that was just insanely difficult is Naxxramas. It was a 40 man dungeon that came after the already insanely difficult AQ40 on the list of raid progression. We’re talking about a time still when raiding Blackwing Lair was an impressive feat. Heroes were still falling dead to Ragnaros within his liar.

The first guild to take down Kel’thuzad was Nihilum, a guild that went on to take many more world firsts such as Gruul all the way to Illidan, later merging into Ensidia and taking more firsts along with similar guilds like SK Gaming, Vodka, Deus Vox, Exodus, Premonition, etc. Their world firsts were like a sport, much like professional football, where we the players rested on our couches and watched other players take on content that we don’t have the time or dedication to. This e-sport style following continues as KIN raiders just took down the heroic Spines of Deathwing for the world first kill for 8/8 in Dragon Soul.

Of course, things changed in WotLK as achievements were added in, giving players an official “I was totally the first” ticket to claim their prize (titles, mounts, etc.). Later, guild achievements were added in, giving the guild itself recognition for being the first to take on a dungeon. This has driven a lot of players crazy with “first” mania. Progression guilds race to be the absolute first, changing dungeon design to allow this by inflating the difficulty either by making the encounters nearly impossible and/or by requiring the average item level to be well above the average.

To some players the achievements mean everything to others they mean a wait to try to the content themselves.

We generally have two nerf cycles. The first is after a dungeon releases and the firsts occur, which lowers the difficulty down a notch and the natural nerfing of the content through gear progression occurs (as players get more gear the content naturally becomes easier). The second nerfing occurs during the next patch cycle where the previous patches content is turned trivial so that players can complete it.

Why World / Realm Firsts?

Realm firsts are a funny subject to talk about because they were originally the most unfair achievements in the game. Why you ask? Well, originally, before the Fall of the Lich King, players got titles for their achievements which meant that anyone not in the raid group who killed the boss first didn’t get the achievement. So if a Warlock who did every boss up until the last had to sit out in order to complete the last boss then they wouldn’t get the achievement. The achievements have since been transferred to the guild achievement page, removing a ton of the controversy behind world firsts.

Of course, there still remains the whole dungeon progression issue. A lot of players see the attitude of progression raiders as rude and discourage, their holier than thou attitudes obnoxious as they fight one another for realm firsts in dungeons with “bugs” and “issues” that prevent normal players from completing them that will be nerfed later through “fixes” that make the dungeons capable of being completed by normal players.

The way I see it is that yes, the system is broken and in need of repair. To understand the issue we first need to look at how raids are set up and the mentality of the playerbase. Originally, hard modes were a special feature of Ulduar that let you get more loot for activating a special mode on a boss that made the encounter much more difficult. Each of these triggers was neat and interesting and some were easy while others were very difficult. The system would later become a toggle that you could switch between a normal and hard mode of a raid and would have their own lockouts (meaning raiders had to raid the same dungeon twice). This meant that the heroic mode went from a gimmick to an additional tier of content

The heroic mode was designed to sate the need of power gamers who wanted the hardest possible dungeon with the best rewards and prestige items. It was so that normal players could raid the normal dungeon without much effort while the hardcore guilds could grind their teeth into really hard encounters that required tons of gear and coordination. This was all well and good, except players don’t see it as an alternate path but instead a separate tier of content that needs to be completed to be the coolest kid in town.

Think of it like this. The dungeon finder is the first tier of a dungeon; let’s say Dungeon (1). The normal raid mode is the second tier of a dungeon; let’s say Dungeon (2). Heroic mode is the third tier of a dungeon, so let’s say Dungeon (3). As we’ve already established, there is now three versions of a dungeon and unless you complete Dungeon (3) then you are not obviously the coolest kid in town and therefore need to keep chasing that carrot on a stick.

Carrots on Sticks

Yet, that third tier of content is often and broken and has to be hotfixed, usually conveniently after guilds tag their world and/or realm firsts. This causes a lot of players unrest, as they feel that everyone should have a fair chance of being the coolest kids in town. Yet, I argue, is it truly wrong for the game to allow this behavior? Is it truly wrong for the game to make a level of content that is almost impossible to beat unless you’re in the top five guilds?

I say no, it isn’t, because it gives us all something to do. If the content wasn’t limited to those few elite guilds and everyone had a chance to complete the heroics as the same pace then we’d all have nothing to do a month into a patch and would sit around in prestige gear that held no prestige at all. Sure, the attitudes of a lot of “first!” guilds are annoying and we all have to wait on content to be hotfixed and gear to come in as a crutch to complete these obviously overtuned fights but in the meantime we’re not chewing through the content at a 100 miles an hour and we’re not having to deal with gnomes telling us that the doors to the next zone won’t open up for a few weeks.

Achievements are another way to keep us distracted and add depth to dungeons.

Gating content, no matter how it is achieved is a good thing and overtuning fights to play into the world / realm first attitudes of players is a lot less invasive than just blocking it off and keeping players from completing it. At least, in my opinion.

What’s your opinion on the subject. Do you think that content should be on a level playing field from day one and not just limited to the top 5 guilds in the world? Do you think that heroic, in its current form, is too easy and should be made where it takes months for the first guild to take down the first heroic boss? Should hard modes revert to the classic Ulduar model and go back to being optional gimmicks for achievements or is the toggle switch the best option? Should we do away with hard modes and make the regular dungeon the heroic and the raid finder the normal?

Leave your comments in the comments section below!