The race to world first in World of Warcraft’s latest raid is reaching its climax. Mythic difficulty for the Azshara’s Eternal Palace raid unlocked ten days ago, and some of the world’s best players are now working to overcome the raid’s final boss, Queen Aszhara.
Of course, this wouldn’t be a WoW world first race if it was all plain sailing, and while most of the strongest contenders for the title have dispatched seven of the raid’s eight bosses, they now seem to be stuck. The third phase of the fight with Queen Aszhara ramps the difficulty up significantly, and progressing much further has proved almost impossible, even for the best in the world.
Earlier this week, EU guild Method reported that most teams had been unable to get Aszhara below half-health, with only US-based Limit dropping her to 49.8%. The guild’s GM, Maximum, tweeted earlier this week to say that decent progress had been made, “but this might be the most not fun endboss ever,” and the fight was “just hard for all the wrong reasons.”
Now, however, it looks like teams are starting to overcome the roadblock, and more help is coming. Blizzard rolled out several hotfixes (via Wowhead) for the fight late last night, and several more tweaks are likely to hit this evening, European time.
That should open the race back up, and I’m keen to see if any more progress is made over the next few hours and days. As things stand, Limit is winning the race, with Method – which won several of the previous raid races in Battle for Azeroth – not far behind. But with all of the top-ten guilds already on the final boss, it could still be anybody’s race.