NA here, I definitely watched Echo over Liquid during my shifts at work because Preach and Alex were on together during the day, and they had such natural chemistry and high-level game experience that it was super easy to listen to them in the background.

Preach does drag in alot of people whenever he is hosting. He is very knowledgeable and can read what is happening in the fight quite well, able to discuss potential strategies, accurately call out if something is salvageable or not. He meshes well with every other caster aswell, pretty much, they can do silly things during downtime without wandering into some utterly cringe topics and like super scripted corporation/television style jokes and skits. I'd love if there was some way for him to be at both teams' events, like if there was a combined showdown at a location that would be fairly convenient time and lag wise for both teams. Him and Dratnos I honestly think are the two best casters when it comes to providing good insights and explanations even to a audience that got 0 clue what is going on unless they get some simple explanations, aswell as getting into super nitty gritty stuff and having high chat interaction during 'calm' periods.

as a german wow andy I agree, we fucking love WoW and the RWF

I must admit i mostly watched Echo streams, as i personally found their casting just more enjoyable to watch. Preach definetely made a big difference, at least for me. I usually had that tab muted on the second monitor and just watched the tries but when i saw Preach i would unmute and listen along. He has such a charismatic voice and i really enjoy listening to him. But imo you guys had the cooler room, with all those Dell PC's. Looked way cozier and overall more enjoyable to play and perform in. Well and Echo had Dancing Jailers with 'Keep Crashing' - Ruzer in the background. That's hard to top.

Gotta respect someone so dedicated to not even accidentally slandering his competition. Win or lose Max displays incredibly respect for his team, the other team, and the sanctity of sportsmanship.

I didn't mind splits, I was always doing something else while listening while you guys did splits, I watch and listen for the jokes, shit is funny every time.

Max is incredible at talking around issues and presenting them in the best light possible. Seriously that's a skill that will make you rich in any single business/field. It's talent.

Dratos and Tellels made a really good show too.

EU here, I completely understand people wanting their region to win and supporting them I want EU to win myself but it is mind blowing the lengts some people go to to be annoying to the other region or just keep hard flaming either NA or EU.

EU here (Germany), I did watch both Echo and Limit/Liquid as always, especially as I did enjoy the (maybe on purpose?) switch of EU on US and US on EU caster setup. Obviously the comedic duo of Tettles & Dratnos just always works so good but I think both teams of casters were really really good again. It was a very enjoyable race to watch on both streams :). Btw, is there any chance that you and Roger do a long and detailed talk again? I would really love to listen to a couple of hours of you two just talking about stuff. ^^

The viewer ship was great because the game is still awesome

Preach is just so easy to listen to. Hard to compete with if you have any history in wow whatsoever

Max was totally right about the Preach diff. I have never followed Echo, I dont even super care about the actual RACE part, I like to watch Max and his team and their banter and them figuring out bosses and killing them. But I did find myself tuning into the Echo channel during this race for the first time just for Preach. His commentary and banter is unmatched and i missed hearing him talk about WoW in a dedicated way.

This right here is actually interesting from a different point of view. Because a lot of the questions are aimed at a be better or worse than the competition point of view. But Maxx man, Your whole attitude is what gaming is about. Wanting to be the best and be competitive whilst at the same time showing that all those doing the same thing as you, is what makes the game and the environment what it is. Hence why organisations in E-Sports are not always about the win or lose. ( Yes they want results) but its about showing that the entire experience is what makes the players and the game what it is and shows that the mentality is shared amongst everyone there. Anyone who has ever wanted to be the best in the world will know what that feeling is like. You have a chat with each other when it's done and you laugh about the whole thing and help each other to get better just to push each other to get to that point. Someone asking if Maxx is gonna retire, surely has never been to that level. I can't see someone retiring unless Real life comes up or the game just doesn't become fun anymore. The Key word there is "FUN". Nice to see you boys are still going good after this one and know you lot will still be here for the future to enjoy watching!!

"Or you can do what Ben does and make everything an Air Horn" - God I love Ben; lmao xD

easiest solution to being hard cook is just taking a day off to reset. taking the weekend off towards the end was to late

Loved Firedup's POV during the stream. Prob my favorite dude to watch, could be because I've mained mage since vanilla, but he's dope.

The reason I would stop by the Echo and Liquid channels was to see the list of what %s other guilds were at which was excellent.

I'm very confident that you guys joking through phases you have down and just generally having a laid back atmosphere despite the intensity is a huge factor..I've never raided in a world top 20 guild but I've played sports and done other competitive things that require a lot of focus and it definetly delays the onset of mental fatigue when the pressure is not turned up to 100 every single second.

I love how well these video are summarized, appreciate them since I'm not around twitch much

20:50 Oh yes, best moment I can remember from all world first races. It reignited my love for the Blood DK.

Was a fascinating race, and I thoroughly enjoyed following Liquids progression. Thank you for this Q&A, as always, appreciate your views and openness, and I look forward to seeing you guys boosting dat Jailer fight :D Most of the time I ended up watching your or Firedup's channel, not the Liquid one because it didn't really offer anything I was interested in - aside from keeping tabs on guild progress. Mainly because I am a RL as well, and I've learned a lot from you in both SoD and this tier, and the main streams don't really run comms all that much. And yeah, though I'm from the EU, I'd much rather follow you guys than Echo, because you guys are just way more entertaining and positive overall. I have the utmost respect for the raid team / leads to call the race and take a breather after Echo did Jay-Jay, it was clear you guys were exhausted, and I hope your decision of focusing on players' well being will be used as a positive example and not forgotten, I think its important these topics are discussed more. Even among professional e-athletes. This race was brutal in terms of duration and pulling hella long days raiding is insanely taxing, even to viewers, but more so on players no matter how amazing they are, and I hope in the future if races go on for as long as this one did, guilds stop pushing 16 hour days. It's not great, even if some can take it. Take care, and thanks for all the greatness!

Max, hell of a race good sir. You liquid boys are entertaining to watch.

I remember thinking after anduinn went down.. i was thinking. If i was in controll of these guilds, i would def take 2-4 hours off that specific raid day ( or the next) and just celebrate whats been done, and then do som fun teambuilding activities. Come back fresh and ready the next day with people having the mindset of " okey..we have come so far, its been long.. But man this is hella fun with these guys... Lets fucking pump" Sometimes its better to take a break in the middle rather then at the end.

Greetings from Germany. Big Fan of you and your effort :) #teamliquid

TL production was really really good. Couldn't say if it was better than Complexity but this race certainly felt like another major esports event.

Gingi has consistent following

Got hard caster gapped. Not just peach but dratnos and tettles are probably the only other two personalities in the whole wow scene that can string a entertaining sentence together, besides max. Maybe throw in jdotb and pikaboo into that mix.

Sports psychologist is gonna be big. Makes a huge impact in all competitive things.

Watched Echo personally because of the casters. That's pretty much it. Dratnos, Tettles, Preach. Can't pass that up. That's not saying anything bad about any other casters for any other guilds.

I watched Scripe or Gingi until Preach or Alex came on the main channel as they hard carry that stream. And then just your channel when echo was done raiding for the day.

Congradulations on an awesome race! It was probably even harder than I imagine it was, but thanks for putting on a good show and making it entertaining!

I support Echo but have always enjoyed watching your race through ImFiredUp perspective, your checmistry is astonishing and smooth, which is always great to watch and hear. eventually, it is a competition, RWF is a never ending war, and it is always good to see different winners in each race. what i really liked the most, is the amount of respect each guild has towards the other, it was glorious, a lesson that should be taught about how competition should be. all the best fellas in your upcoming RWFs.

I honestly, honestly was surprised that Liquid gave up. Throughout this race, I thought Echo would be the one to give up first. Because Halondrus was really draining, you can see in their faces that it was just getting to them. And Naowh, their main tank left the RWF venue and went home like a week into the RWF. And then on Anduin, it was also feeling like Gingi and Roger was gonna kill someone. And whenever you go over to Limit's stream, they were just laughing and joking and shit throughout the whole raid.

Dman dudes! I was rooting for you. Stay strong stay aweome!

Honestly, and I mean this with all due respect, the Team Liquid casters were kind of boring and dull. So I found myself not really tuning in there. I found myself going between your channel and Echo’s main channel. Preach for sure brought in viewers there and I was one of them. He and Alex were awesome! I couldn’t wait to get off work every day to tune in to see y’all’s progress. You should be proud of the work you did!

I thought the Liquid casters were awful compared to Echo's casters. Preach was SO good. And I don't even watch Preach's stuff, and I never have.

You're spot on about Preach Max. O know he's stepped away from wow, and he probably wants to focus more on his family, but damn the man can cast and attract viewers. The org which manages to secure him somehow is going to have massive viewership.

Suspect Blizz QA goes - devs set up the mechanics of the fight and turn down all the numbers, QA ensures the mechanics "work", then devs turn up all the numbers and hand it over to RWF guilds.

The Team Liquid channel had the best production imo. It was really easy to tune in throughout the day and immediately catch on with progress, pulls, the standings, phases in the fight, etc. Echo's channel did have some pretty good casters as you mentioned.

I watched Echo, much less ads.

Liquid "In the lead" on jailor? Based on boss %? Hard to say, you Guys and echo had different strats right? Echo tried to min/max every 5 sec period at a time, not pushing for %, but for early execution, which payed off. I'd say Echo was "in the lead" from lords onward

what an insane race !

Just wanna say that I enjoyed preheat so much everytime he showed up on stream. I'd love to see him more often in such a role. Greetings from a rwf loving german

I dont know how he can keep saying that Limit was ahead until the end of Jailer when Echo killed LoD and Rygelon first despite being 24hrs behind. Limit was clearly ahead until and after anduin but lost their lead from Lod onwards and was far behind

You won on the real endboss.Halondrus the fake middle boss :D

Baboombabam is an amazing character name

I watched both at the same time!

You probably should make some drastic change. You said you shouldnt but you went from 1st in nathria to 2nd in sanctum to 5th in sepulcher.

RWF test realm. Free Max toon. As soon as you down a boss all it's loot is available on a NPC that spawns. City NPC's sell every drop not in the raid.

Liquids production was amazing 👏

With the Echo channel, you could pop in for a minute and get all the relevant information about the race. With the Liquid/Max channels, you had to at least watch a full pull to figure stuff out. Not to say that I was in a rush at the time, but if it's infinitely easier to get value from one venue instead of the other, you'd pick the easier option all the time.

Max , being from Eu i really enjoy watching and listening to you. Was switching between echos stream with awsome casters, and your private stream. You seem like a great leader and you are easy to understand and follow. Of course i root for EU but tbh you alone almost get me to the Na side. Great race 👌

As usual, wonderful post-mortem video and I hope we get another with you talking through it with one of the guys from Echo because that's always fun to. I want to disagree with one point you made about Master Loot though, the idea that it somehow only affects 50-100 people at the top. First I'm pretty sure I understand your thought process here. You're saying that ML helps you trade and target gear which helps you pump your iLvl, but that only really matters for those in the RWF because by the time the rest of us get to those fights our gear is so inflated that if we're wiping, it's not for lack of gear. I agree with all of that but I still think the absence of ML and all the other batshit loot rules affects the majority of the player base just as deeply, but for different reasons. Yes, we don't NEED the gear in the same way you do, but there is always a premium on anyone's time and when you're paying a sub fee that time investment is all the more important. So when you and your buddies down a boss that gear represents your reward for investing time and money in to the game and because of Blizz's convoluted rules that don't make sense and benefit absolutely no one you're essentially flushing that investment down the drain which always feels like a huge slap in the face that doesn't need to be there. The absence of ML and other insane loot rules affect us all equally, but for different reasons. In the RWF it's more of an objective practical concern and for the majority of players it's more of a subjective emotional one but regardless all of our time/money is being wasted and we're all sick and tired of rules no one asked for that don't make sense.

Reminds me of Ricky Bobby- If you aint 1st you're last.

Random question - what Chrome theme is that?

Who ever gets preach, gets the views. That guy probably has a bigger following than both the top 2 guilds combined.

Interesting about Preach, I turned the Echo stream off when I saw Preach was on stream.

Viewer fatigue is real. Extremely overturned or overcomplicated bosses are tough to watch for days.

love ya maxiebooboo better luck next tier tho, forreal.

From someone who's from the EU, i was rooting for you guys, not because i don't like Echo, but i find it amazing, that you guys can have so much fun during raids, even on progress, and still play the way you do, can't wait to see what Season 4 will bring, as well as the next expansion, it's always a blast watching you guys play.

I like listening to the Liquid players, but Echo main stream was way better than Liquids. so i switched between them. I really like that you guys are serious while having fun.

Everyone I know wants master loot back. I know people who quit the game because they didnt like how personal loot worked (like being the best player in the raid and watching newly recruited newbs loot your bis when you never got it in months). And im a casual player. The only problem that removing ml solves - is the number tech support tickets, so they can fire support staff

I am pretty curious about what would happen without WAs in WoW. I mean the new Bosses are almost impossible without WAs. I even think Blizz designes around the "WA-Knowledge"

Can no longer root for them. Echo made them tapout and I do not see them ever beating them again.

Great race, Max 💪🏼

I'd be interested in maxs take on that scripe stated in his stream the he won't be involved in the same capacity in rwf if the global release isn't added

This is my personal opinion, but I wish dungeon and raid journal was removed, and the raids were tested internally so the general playerbase would not know abilities ahead of time. Ofcourse there is a ton of datamining being done, but I would just preffer easier raids, without dungeon journal. Gz on a nice race to world first to Liquid, the Halondrud and Anduin kills were dope.

48:06 I haven’t played with sound on in years. 👀

I love how different we think about the "having too much fun" situation. I think you guys are way more serious than Echo, at least generally. You joke around too (obviously, it's important to have fun to not go insane) but you are pretty good at handling it when it happens. When Echo joke about stuff or if someone makes a stupid mistake, EVERYONE goes nuts. I love those differrences :)

What I loved about the Limit Stream was the overlay grafics. Very well done.

The censoring in this is so inconsistent and I fucking love it.

Echo was joking around on their kill.

NA here, huge support. Always a fan of limit/liquid. Glory of NA Wow community. I have watched everyday since the get go and this was a super tough race. I felt like before halondrus, you guys are way ahead of Echo, but things changed after Anduin. Echo was able to maintain a better mental state in the end. I felt like maybe less caferine + having work-out routine definitely would help. The fight is only Liquid vs Echo. it's 1st or nothing for you guys. You have done a correct decision Max. Teammates are the most important treasure.

On another note: Limits best casters were Meiix and Naguura together BY FAR. They couldnt compete with Preach and Alex of Echo but thats just unfair but Naguura and Meiix were amazing

That was an amazing race. Truly think no NA team will ever get first of it goes on for more than two weeks though. Of the 30+ roster only a few can actually make money streaming and it’s just impossible to be a professional athlete without the outside support that can allow you to play your “season” unhindered by your responsibilities outside of the game. Even if a lot of them are freelancers or something they’ll have clients calling and expecting things done, to say nothing of college, family and everything else. Props for carrying that NA flag high. ❤️👍

in the lead? You were behind since the dreadlords..

The coolest end boss kill of all time is Method vs Garrosh

Im just surpised Method got #2, Sco pulled the big stops after that Method Josh fiasco.

for some reason, i watched almost no jailer prog. not sure why. but funny to hear that viewers dropped in general for the last boss. maybe i just got tired after so many days. and some bosses before that were already so hype. in the end, i only watched maybe 2h of liquid jailer and then the last 1 or 2 ours of echo until the kill. weird race

Something I would have asked: Noticed Echo used a mistweaver for at least the jailer kill Did you guys have a (top) mistweaver in your lineup - and if so, did you think about bringing them in?

Yes it definitely felt like that - burnout. That last day of progress looked like people were just so tired and I could almost see this curve of consistency dropping down. Anyway I love watching you raiding guys. Not only because of your skill, but also the way you do it Max feels like complete show with all the coms open and you discussing stuff online in front of viewers etc.

I agree about dbm, the spam it gives you is insane, I'd prefer it was all off by default

Enjoyed the fuck out of that race. The casters like Meiix and Naguura we're great. Just hilarious. Got banned from twitch chat for making a copium joke though :/

EU THIS NA THAT IM JUST HERE TO JAM IN CHAT But seriously, I hope your contract with Liquid stays. Having to remake the main channel every race is really detrimental to retaining viewers and you guys put in so much work you definitely all deserve more views and subs. Insanely good job this tier and best of luck in the next expansion!

When you guys get to necessary splits/bosses that require 100-300 pulls, I'll be out to just catch your guys' kill announcement or yeknow?

As a german i agree with Max. Germans love world first things.

Overall, it was a truly fastinating Race, from all Guild - but esp to Liquid & Echo. Great credit to you Max and the team for the event you made. Having Naguura & Xyro was great on your caste! Finally, credit to you for the over view of the race with the honesty of the event.

On the topic of blizzard changing the loot system, its ebtirely possible and they absoluetly cater to you top 1% guilds. Your the only ones left playing at this level, casuals are no longer blizzards focus

you come across as genuine but then i look back to the time you were lying about raiding in ffxiv so there for i cant even believe half the stuff you said in the video

Drug use affects raiding as well. Not guessing i KNOW some people do

Change loot like it was in WRATH... we all had same loot at start and Paragon was way better then rest of us

Max, Are you guys planning to sell HSOTFO boost?

Release mythic 2 weeks later, and you'll see the perceived need for splits drop significantly.

I think when people say that bosses were overtuned theres two competing factors at play. Were the bosses technically doable with the gear that the first two guilds reached them with? Obviously yes, they got killed. Did this race last longer than Blizzard anticipated? Also yes, based on the recent interview. So if the goal was for the race to be over or on the Jailer by the time that Morgan Day interview was originally scheduled, then they missed by a lot. If the goal was for every boss to be super tight and just barely killable with no specific goal on the end date then they did pretty well.

Love that weak aura question at the end. I raided with a guy that had a WA for fucking every step he took. It would drive me crazy. Every fight. "oh wait. theres a WA for this and that." *copies link. Just fucking learn and play. GG.

just a load of excuses , bottom line is u bottled it

Of course Liquid don't care about the 5th finish. They put on a great event with a ton of viewers that I'm sure made them and their sponsors a ton of money. And even with the 5th finish, they'll probably make a better and more viewed event for next tier.

Max faked blind prog in FF14? LUL

Hello Max. I really like you and respect you a lot. You are smart, honest and fair, a true sportsman. One thing bothered me a lot during WFR and that was how Liquid handled chat bans. They were like banning people left and right and telling that they are banning "toxic" materials. Well I was triggered by this because it was right after Echo downed Dreadlords before you did if I recall correctly and casters were talking about EU-NA rivalry, how people can get toxic, etc. Then I wrote "talking trash is not toxic ffs, you have to suck it sometimes" and got banned. I quit following and never tried to try to lift the ban. Of course some people might have been really toxic but way I see it they were like 12 year old kids or they are using really stupid bots and key words to ban people. I was really like "are you serious?"... Anyway, hoping for new videos to come. Wish you the best (except WRFs, I am EU biased, sorry :P) One more thing bothered me actually but it was rather my foolishness. There was a button at your channel's screen like "free subscription" and I thought like "this should be an add, or limited time thing I suppose" and clicked it. And it immediately used my Prime sub which I was keeping to give another streamer. I felt so stupid but at the same time I wasn't expecting such a thing from you. These kind of things should have some kind of warning like "this is going to use your awaiting Prime sub, please confirm". Like buying stuff online, an "are you sure?" warning. I am a Twitch noob but it didn't stop me feeling a bit scammed at the same time. Hope you understand...