The Raid Observer: Week 3, Weekend Update

Some interesting developments over the weekend so far, most notable being our very first 7/8 kill, thus providing a small bit of movement to a race that's got more and more guilds queueing up at the 6/8 stage and even more joining the overall heroic race. Read on!

Spine World First

Around 4 pm GMT yesterday (Saturday afternoon), news was circulated that the Korean guild KIN RAIDERS (즐거운공격대) had defeated the Spine encounter on 25-man heroic mode, making them the world's top ranked raiding guild at the moment and still the only guild to have crushed the Spine of Deathwing. This kill appears to have been accompanied by a few rumours or questions, which can happen when a lot of guilds are spending a lot of time on the encounter, particularly when they've hit a wall themselves. How did they do it? Did they exploit? Was there a creative use of game mechanics? Was there anything fishy? After all, who's heard of KIN RAIDERS right?

I'm not trying to suggest that EU and US server players and guilds had not noticed the guild before but I have to wonder if part of this seemingly surprised/frustrated/bemused/suspicious reaction might be related to the fact that we in the West may not have been taking our Eastern friends very seriously in the overall raiding race. And why is this? Maybe it's the fact that for the most part the Korean guilds have dominated the 10-man raiding scene. But not all Korean guilds limit themselves to 10-man raiding. During the Cataclysm expansion, KIN RAIDERS has been in the top twenty worldwide on 25-man raiding mode. The guild is not new to the scene, nor does it appear to have switched from 10-man to 25-man raiding. Though this current rank reflects the highest possible ranking achieved to date, it has consistently remained in the top fifteen for the past year.

The main reason I even bring this up is mostly due to the reaction I've been hearing from a number of observers and players in relation to what appears to be seen as an unexpected development. And is it really? Or have we just not been keeping our eyes open to what's going on around us if it's outside of the EU or the US. I'd say that's a fairly common practice in the game, partly driven by language differences, I'd suggest. The Korean, Chinese, and Taiwan players appear to have developed their own robust community sites and the interaction between Asian server players and those in the West is minimal at best. We have had attempts, with the visit earlier this year by DREAM Paragon and For the Horde to China, to develop those relationships more, but I'd say in general we're still a fairly different set of gaming communities. And if the emerging information about KIN RAIDERS and its approach to clearing the content is telling us anything, it may be that we all have a lot to learn about the different ways in which groups choose to organise themselves both structurally and strategically, especially when the raiding race is at stake.

I'd say nothing about Lucky Tier 13 is turning out as anyone expects but my hat is off to the guilds as they keep at things!