Thunderfire Games officially acknowledged the achievements, commemorating both guilds and confirming their prize.
Thunderfire Games (translated)
Their prize money is ready! Stay tuned for the thrilling Race to World First and cheer on the Chinese teams!
Congratulations to Huoguo Hero for defeating Chimaerus, the Undreamt God, achieving second place in the Mythic difficulty Dreamrift raid and first kill in Asia! Go Chinese team!
Congratulations to Jitianhong for defeating Chimaerus, the Undreamt God, achieving third place in the Mythic difficulty Dreamrift raid and second place in Asia!
Two of China's oldest competitive raiding guilds, Huoguo Hero (aka Hotpot Hero, formerly Chao Jie) is currently the #1 ranked guild in China, having placed World 4th in all three tiers of The War Within. Meanwhile, longtime competitor Jitianhong (aka JTH) placed 5th, 7th, and 8th in The War Within. Both guilds have routinely placed in the top 10 rankings in nearly every raid tier since Legion, even after having to start completely new accounts to continue raiding on Taiwanese realms during the Blizzard shutdown throughout Dragonflight.
Huoguo Hero defeated Chimaerus less than an hour after their servers came up on Thursday, two days after the North American reset.
Incentivizing the Return to Chinese Servers
Since restoring service in China, NetEase and Thunderfire Games have provided increasing incentives to Chinese raid guilds, pledging the first ever official prize offered in the Race to World First, offering ¥1 million RMB (~$144k USD) to any guild that claims first place over their North American and European competitors, increasing by an additional ¥200,000 each tier the prize goes unclaimed.
The original $137.5k USD prize pool has now increased to $231,576 USD.
Now up to ¥1.6 million RMB in Midnight, Thunderfire Games further sweetened the deal by opening their previously pledged ¥500,000 RMB top 3 finish prize to all three of the Midnight Season 1 raids, which Huoguo Hero and JTH have now claimed. Additionally, the top 50 Chinese guilds in each raid will be recorded in a standalone Chinese Server Hall of Fame, with each participating player receiving a physical trophy to commemorate their achievement.
Thunderfire Games (translated)
I. CN Server Hall of Fame
Every hard-fought battle in Mythic raids is worth remembering. Starting from the new expansion, the CN server will launch an exclusive Mythic raid leaderboard.
The core members of the first 50 CN server guilds to complete the Mythic difficulty challenges of the three major 12.0 raids will receive customized physical souvenirs. Furthermore, every guild that completes the challenge will be listed on the leaderboard, forever engraving your legacy of protecting Azeroth. The birth of the CN Server Hall of Fame benefits from our governance of the raid environment, and its arrival also sets higher requirements for continuing to maintain fair play. We will absolutely do our utmost to safeguard the efforts of the braves.
IV. More Exciting First Kill Bounties
The World First bounty prepared for the CN server teams has accumulated to 1.6 million RMB. With three raids in 12.0, how is it calculated? Of course, every single one counts! Each raid will add 200,000 RMB to the total prize pool, a super acceleration! Although an objective gap exists, perhaps a CN server team can suddenly rise in the single-boss raid "Dream Rift" and pull off an upset to take the prize? Let's wait and see! The 500,000 RMB top-three bonus introduced in the last patch is still in effect, just one step away. We wish the CN braves smooth sailing in their challenges.
