The latest and largest expansion yet for Bungie’s Destiny 2 called Forsaken was released on September 4 on consoles and PC. It would be accurate to say that after a lackluster first year for Destiny 2, this latest expansion has ignited the fan base into a frenzy, frankly, it’s very, very good. Although I think there are many fans, myself included who still feel a little ripped off by the quality of the content in year one of the game.

Destiny is a unique game that combines FPS elements with MMO looter/shooter elements as well. One of the traditional toughest tasks in any Destiny game is the 6 man Raid’s which are the pinnacle of team work based co-op gaming in the game. The latest Raid for this new expansion was released at 6pm BST, 1pm ET and all other time zones this past Friday.

Whilst average players like myself simply do not have the time to play the game enough to be high enough power for the Raid on opening week, there are of course professional streamer/YouTube gamer’s out there who do this as a source of income. These pro gamers are playing as much of the game as they can to get ready for a race that always happens when a new Raid launches. The race for worlds first completion.

Many pro teams had their Twitch streams active and teams assembled ready for the Raid launch this Friday and as the content dropped these teams began their journey through The Last Wish to see who would be crowned the words first team. The winners of this contest, whilst both living on in gaming memory, also got several exclusive awards, there was an Exotic rare weapon, which whilst it can drop for anyone, would drop for every single member of the world’s first team. In addition to the worlds first rewards there was also a special emblem for anyone who completed the Raid within the first 24 hours of it releasing.

Now, this is hardly the first time there has been a world’s first race for a Destiny raid, but this one was a little different. Previously, the longest any team has ever taken to claim world’s first on a Raid was the very first Raid of Destiny called The Vault of Glass. This is a Raid I have completed many, many times myself a few years ago and it was commonly believed that the completion took so long because no one knew what to expect from the very first Raid to ever launch for this game. The Vault of Glass was beaten in 14 hours, which is no short timescale, however, each Raid after this was beaten within shorter and shorter timescales as gamers became both more familiar with Bungie’s design and how to play the game most effectively. Check out the short trailer below.

So like I normally do I sat down at dinner time to watch some of the team as they started on their journey. Things were going slower than normal for all teams and as one team would take the lead in a certain encounter, another would peg them back at the following encounter and this ebbed and flowed for many, many hours. By the time I decided to call it quits and head to bed, only 1 team had managed to make it through to the final boss, I expected that by the time I awoke, I would find out which team had own. However, to my surprise when I awoke the next morning, not a single team had managed to make it any farther than when I had gone to bed on Friday evening.

Now the race was well beyond the record set by The Vault of Glass and the race for worlds first was starting to become a race to finish within the first 24 hours. Eventually, after 18 hours and 45 minutes straight of gaming, clan Redeem managed to defeat the boss and escape the Raid with their prizes. Redeem’s 6 man team consisted of Modern, Sweatcicle, Ehroar, Indica, FleshCrunch and Gladd, and it was Gladd’s stream I was watching when they completed it. It took around 10 minutes or so and Gladd became visibly emotional after such a long complicated task, as they were greeted not only by their loot, but by their actions changing the game world for every other player in small subtle ways.

There was only one other team out of all those competing that managed to beat The Last Wish within the 24-hour time limit and therefore only 12 people in the world have the special first-day emblem. The last time Bungie developed a Raid this big there were almost 40,000 people who beat it within the first 24 hours. It really was a remarkable race, you see Bungie give no indication at all to players on how to beat these Raids, the team has to work it all out for themselves. Gamers like myself just wait for the pros to finish and start producing guides so we know what to do before we enter into the task.

I also cannot write this without giving mention to another team competing for the prize, Team Math Class. The team led by pro-gamer Datto were ahead and behind at various stages, they have never gotten a world’s first before and at one point we all thought they may just upset the odds and get this one. Unfortunately, they hot some complications and were still trying to beat the Raid as the clock ticked closer to the 24-hour time limit for the special emblem. Amazingly they ended up becoming the third team to beat the Raid, but 2  minutes after the 24 hours was up. Ouch!

It really was an exciting if lengthy contest, and I have to give praise to Bungie for doing so many things right with this latest expansion. I can’t wait to get in there with my own team and best this Raid, although it will be 2-3 weeks before we even attempt it.

Did anyone watch any of the streams, or have an attempt at this race themselves? Share any thoughts you have in the usual place below.

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