For Halloween, Asmongold’s OTK network hosted a big hardcore tournament in World of Warcraft Classic. Twitch streamer Snutz went home with $50,000 after beating his rival Ziqo.
That happened:
What were the rules of the tournament? The tournament took place on a WoW Classic hardcore server. To participate, players had to create a new Horde character on the American server Skull Rock.
Participants had until October 30th to bring their new character to level 60. The tournament itself took place on Halloween on October 31st.
On hardcore servers, characters that fall to 0 hitpoints cannot continue to be played. So if you lose your character, you have to create a new character and level it up again. Only new and appropriately registered characters who made it to level 60 by the October 30th deadline were eligible for the tournament.
What is a Mak’Gora? Mak’Gora roughly means duel of honor in the language of the orcs from World of Warcraft. This refers to an honorable duel between two members of the Horde faction. Participants usually fight to the death wearing only loincloths.
1 winner and 63 corpses – this is how the hardcore tournament in WoW Classic went
How did the tournament go? A total of 64 players took part in the OTK hardcore tournament on Halloween. At the beginning there was a qualifying round that was supposed to be non-lethal. In fact, three players failed to qualify, including one who was caught in an explosion from his Goblin Rocket Shoes.
The duel for eighth place was originally a draw. However, two villains confronted their own Mak’Gora to cleanly dismantle it.
How did the final fight go? The duel for first place took place between Twitch streamers Snutz and Ziqo. The two fought for four minutes. They both kept their distance and tried to make the other waste resources.
Snutz Warlock won with a combination of damage-over-time spells and attacks from his demon pet. The character finally stood victorious in a mountain of corpses – in addition to the 63 slain participants, there was also the cameraman who was supposed to record the event for a stream.
After the final, Snutz faced another player in a duel who unfortunately no longer officially qualified. The streamer won here too.
When asked what the winner would do with their $50,000 prize money, Snutz talked about possibly attending BlizzCon. But for now he wants to take a break.
Deserved victory or not? The conclusion of the community
On Reddit, user Contract007 states (Reddit) that the two finalists did not win on their own: As participants in the OTK Mak’Gora, everyone knew that Snutz and Ziqo would win from day one.
In the post, Contract007 writes that a VOD from Snutz a month ago showed that he had already been provided with important items back then. In addition, Snutz would have had a boost at the start of the tournament, which would have made leveling easier. He also would have easily had a tide spell before any other player.
The user sees the community of the two streamers as responsible: they actively boosted their idols.
How did the other commenters react? The feedback from the rest of the Reddit community on the post is divided. User PerfectlySplendid (reddit) points out that streamer Mitch has already cheated for $500 and cheating for $50,000 wouldn’t be surprising.
Other users take a very dry view of this and write that as long as Blizzard doesn’t officially support these tournaments and put resources behind them, they won’t become fairer. The remaining comments also praise the performance and entertainment quality of the other participants. Overall, users probably hope that unknown players who don’t stream will also have a chance in the future.
BlizzCon 2023 will take place next weekend:
BlizzCon 2023 – All important dates for the new WoW addon, Diablo IV and more