Method once again expands World of Warcraft esports potential with raid speed run event

Over the past couple of years, Method has put a spotlight on competitive World of Warcraft raiding by allowing viewers to watch world-first level raiding for the first time during progression. And today, the organization is looking to expand on what WoW esports can be with a special event at 11am CT.

Racing against Aversion Gaming, another top-level raiding guild, Method will pit their raiding teams against one another to see who can clear the most recent retail WoW raid, Ny’alotha. 

The difference between this race and the “Race to World First” is that both guilds have already cleared the instance many times at this point and know what to expect going into the instance. So the competition will feel significantly more like a true “race to the finish” than RWF, which feels like more of a marathon than a sprint.

The event will be viewable live on Method’s official Twitch channel and is being sponsored by MSI. Rebroadcasts of the competition will be available on sponsor MSI’s Twitch, YouTube, and Facebook channels beginning Friday at 8pm CT.

On top of racing in Ny’alotha, the two guilds will compete with one another in a couple of other showcases. In the Shadowlands alpha, the guilds will race one another in the five-man dungeon that’s available for testing. Following that, the teams will end their competition with some PvP duels to give the experience a well-rounded appeal.

The PvP dueling competition is particularly interesting because, just like the other competitions, it goes outside of the realms of what Blizzard typically organizes for WoW esports. While Classic has a third-party run dueling league, the retail version of the game doesn’t have dueling competitions.

Instead, players tend to queue up for two-vs-two or three-vs-three last-man-standing arena fights, with three-vs-three versions of the PvP instances being a sanctioned Blizzard esport.

Overall, the theme of the event seems to be variety. While WoW esports fans can watch competitive arena or mythic dungeon runs just about any time, Method’s event today is creating a competition where it previously didn’t exist in retail.