Breakfast Topic: The race for firsts

Method’s world first kill of mythic Blackhand yesterday has us thinking about the constant race in games to be “first” — and whether it still matters to the average player. The race to realm first used to seem like a big deal, at least to me: in Vanilla, I probably could have listed the top three guilds on my realm and could have told you precisely who killed which bosses first in Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, and Ahn’Qiraj. But today? I doubt I could list one of the top 10 guilds on my merged realm, especially considering how many people I see and interact with while playing in cross-realm zones.

In Wrath, Cataclysm, and Mists, WoW acknowledged the race for firsts by awarding achievements to many “realm first” players, including first of each class and race to reach max level, first to max out professions, and first to complete raid achievements. But in Warlords, such achievements are nowhere to be found. So is the race to first no longer important? Or has it simply grown beyond the boundaries of a single realm (or even continent), so it’s now only the world firsts that catch our attention?