UPDATE (July 29th): North American raid guild Limit have secured the world-second in the race to defeating Mythic Queen Azshara, nine hours after Method.
Limit were streaming from the Red Bull Gaming Sphere in London, along with European guild Pieces.
“It’s been a wonderful experience to do the raid here in London. I got to meet all of the people from my guild. I’ve never met any of them in real life, and then on top of that I get to do the thing that I love doing which is being in the world first race. We’ve only really been raiding in the Race to World First since Uldir,” said Kevin ‘Thdlock’ Arean from Limit.
“This race has been a little bit harder than the other races considering that Azhara was a little overtuned for the first few days. Overall the race has been extremely difficult but it’s nothing that we’re not used to.”
Original article (July 28th): UK esports organisation Method have become the first World of Warcraft raid guild in the world to defeat Queen Azshara on Mythic difficulty.
They downed the final boss of the Eternal Palace raid in Battle for Azeroth earlier this afternoon (Sunday July 28th).
Method pipped the likes of Limit, Pieces, Alpha and other guilds to the post in the latest race to world-first. The Method team were streaming live from the TakeTV studios in Germany, while Limit and Pieces were raiding from the Red Bull Gaming Sphere in London.
After claiming the world-first, Method founder and co-owner Scott McMillan (aka Sco) thanked the viewers:
“I feel so good right now, it means a lot. This is huge. The viewership is crazy right now, the Method stream has 161,000 viewers. Thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you so much for supporting us. It’s been an epic journey and it wouldn’t be possible without you guys.”
You can see the moment Method claimed the world-first here:
All other guilds taking part in the latest race to world-first had downed 7 out of 8 bosses in the Eternal Palace. But it was Method who got Queen Azshara first after some 356 wipes on her, and more than 600 wipes across the entire raid.
You can see Method’s full raid composition/player and class line-up for the successful attempt here, taken from the Method raid progress website.
The race to world first started on July 16th. Guilds made their way through the raid fairly comfortably but hit a road-block at the final boss, Queen Azshara. Blizzard nerfed her a few days ago and this allowed the Mythic raiders to progress much faster.
To anyone wondering why we were so unstable in early progress: Before the hotfixes it required going upto 7 stacks to keep the wards healthy. When we started taking only 5, everything became easier due to having 66% more health. This is a lot when spears can 1 shot w/ 7 stacks.
— Justwait (@Justw8) July 28, 2019
Queen Azshara joins a long line of world-first bosses secured by Method over the years, including Sha of Fear in 2012, Garrosh Hellscream in 2013, Archimonde in 2015, Argus the Unmaker in 2017 and more.
Most recently in the latest Battle for Azeroth raid Method got the world-first Mythic G’huun last year and the world-first Mythic Jaina earlier this year.
Method will debut the full world-first Queen Azshara kill video on Thursday August 1st on the Method Twitch channel.
More Warcraft news: Is WoW Shadowlands the next Warcraft expansion?
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
