Speedrunning In MMOs

Speedrunning has seen an explosion of popularity over the past couple of years. The bi-annual Games Done Quick marathons easily reach over 100,000 viewers and the amount of money they raise for charity continues to grow each year. Speedrunning events typically focus on offline games and to my knowledge there hasn’t been an MMO appearance yet—and probably with good reason, but speedrunning in MMOs is actually fairly common despite the lack of exposure.

Vanilla World of Warcraft is one of the earliest examples of MMO speedrunning that I’ve encountered. A player by the name of Mancow consistently beat other players to level 60 on every new server that Blizzard added. Mancow eventually renamed to Joana and continued his power leveling antics, even creating a text and video guide that he sold to players who wanted to learn his secrets. Joana’s 1-60 leveling guide is now completely free (albeit outdated) and his record-breaking run of 4 days 20 hours is available on YouTube for all to see.

Power leveling is a common form of speedrunning in MMOs. Several games have promoted speed leveling in the past and there’s usually rewards associated with completing a set challenge. Blizzard hosted two leveling events for World of Warcraft in March 2006: a race to level 50 and a “most level-25 characters” contest. Winners received beta access to the Burning Crusade expansion test and the event was open to players from US, EU, and Korea. TERA also had a leveling contest to coincide with the release of the Ninja class. Players that reached certain levels on their Ninja characters within the first 24 hours of the new update received exclusive titles like “Chuunin” and “Jounin.”

It’s easy to claim you have the world record time for something obscure like “fastest time to create a character,” so thankfully there are websites like speedrun.com that host leaderboards for official categories. Each game has approved runs for players to compete in and video proof is required to that your time is legitimate. Speedrun.com has a couple of MMOs in its collection of over 6500 speedrun-approved games such as World of Warcraft, Warframe. World of Warcraft has multiple low-level runs and a level 1-100 category where anything goes, RuneScape has a tutorial island speedrun, and Warframe has multiple team and solo categories like boss rushes and raids. These games aren’t as popular as traditional speedrun games like Mario and Zelda, but it’s a niche genre so it’s to be expected.

MMOs have seen a bit of success in the speedrunning community but they’re unattractive for a couple of reasons. Patches tend to invalidate past runs due to balance issues. If an update nerfs a class or item that’s used for the world record then it could make beating that time impossible. Categories are also limited due to the progressive nature of an MMO—it’s better to have low-level speedruns that can be done with a fresh to encourage more people to compete instead of end-game speed runs that require max level characters and good gear. Traditional speedrun rules are difficult to apply to MMOs, but for those interested in testing their PvE prowess against other players there are alternate options.

Several MMOs have built-in mechanics that allow for speedrun-like competition. World of Warcraft introduced a Challenge Mode system in its Mists of Pandaria expansion that functions like a time trial mode for instances. Each dungeon is buffed for increased difficulty and you’re graded with a bronze, silver, or gold medal depending on how quickly your group finishes the dungeon. Equipment is also scaled down to the same power as entry-level end-game gear. This prevents people from over-gearing Challenge Modes and also encourages lesser geared players to take part as well.

Challenge Mode replicates a lot of the methodology and excitement in speedrunning. There’s a lot of optimized routes in each dungeon, the occasional exploit or glitch, plenty of trial and error to find new strategies, and a community to compete with. There’s also rewards to motivate players such as vanity armour sets, weapons, mounts, and titles. Unfortunately, Challenge Mode will be changed in the Legion expansion and it will no longer focus on clear times. Instead, it’s based on infinitely scaling dungeons and players will be ranked on the difficulty they clear instead of how quickly they finish it.

Path of Exile is another example of a game that offers speedrun-esque features. Instead of being focused on end-game dungeons like World of Warcraft, Path of Exile hosts race seasons that any player can compete in. Each season runs for roughly a month and there are multiple events every day. The most common goal is to accumulate the most experience, but there’s also boss-kill events that rank you on how fast you can defeat a specific enemy. Events are sprinkled with various modifiers such as cutthroat, the ability to meet and attack other players in-game, and solo, which removes the ability to form parties and trade. Modifiers add a whole new dimension of strategy, forcing players to adapt on the fly rather than optimize the same route.

Path of Exile wholly embraces the spirit of speedrunning and spices it up with a host of interesting changes. Path of Exile’s race season starts on the 23rd of July and Grinding Gear Games mentions they’ve added more boss-kill events into the mix, giving it a more pronounced speedrun feel than previous iterations.

Speedrunning is a great way to increase replayability in any game. Add an in-game timer, host some leaderboards, throw in a couple of rewards for incentive, and you’ve got extra content for players to enjoy and compete in. Casual players can challenge their friends for a bit of extra fun and hardcore players will have a place to test their skills against the world. Speedrunning is becoming an increasingly popular way to play games, so I hope more developers will be willing to it in future releases.