Nerub-ar Palace: Liquid Reclaims the Throne After Bans, Bugs, and a 0.98% Heartbreak

The Race to World First for Nerub-ar Palace began on September 17, 2024 as the opening tier of The War Within — and it almost didn't start fairly. Before the first boss was even pulled on Mythic, some of the most prominent players in the world were banned. What followed was a twelve-day race that became the longest in several years, ending with Liquid defeating Queen Ansurek on September 29 and Echo following the next day, separated by less than a full raid's worth of time.

The Pre-Race Bans

The biggest story of Nerub-ar Palace almost happened before the race began. In the days leading up to the Mythic opening, multiple raiders from both Liquid and Echo — including high-profile players like Gingi — received four-day bans for exploiting a currency and reputation glitch tied to the new Warbands system and Delves content.

The timing was devastating. The week before Mythic opens is when top guilds run their "splits" — dozens of coordinated Heroic clears designed to funnel the best gear onto their key Mythic players. Being locked out of your main account for four days during that window didn't just cost progression time; it potentially cost thousands of item levels of character power going into the race.

Both guilds adapted and competed anyway. Whether the bans affected the final margin is impossible to say with certainty, but they shaped the early narrative of the race before it even started.

Ky'veza and the Mid-Race Nerf

Nexus-Princess Ky'veza arrived as a tuning wall rather than a mechanical one. The encounter was tight enough that Liquid, playing at near-perfect execution, were still running into a hard enrage that shouldn't have been reachable. Blizzard intervened mid-race with a 6% health reduction and a nerf to the "Queensbane" damage in her final sequence — a correction that acknowledged the encounter wasn't solvable in its original state even by the best players in the world.

With the adjusted tuning, Liquid cleared Ky'veza in 304 pulls. Echo, progressing behind them, required 256 — fewer attempts, but from a position where Liquid had already established a lead and was applying pressure on the next encounter while Echo finished up.

Echo also went off-stream during portions of their Ky'veza progression, obscuring the specific movement techniques and WeakAuras they were using to handle the complex triangle-positioning mechanics. The tactic drew familiar debate about whether the Race to World First should function as a broadcast event or a private competition — a conversation the community revisits every time a top guild dims their stream.

The Silken Court

The dual-boss encounter that served as the final gate before Queen Ansurek required coordinated debuff management and simultaneous handling of "Web" mechanics across two targets. While both Liquid and Echo cleared it — Liquid in 171 pulls, Echo in 189 — many guilds outside the top two spent days on the Silken Court while the leaders were already learning the final boss. The gap between the elite tier and everyone else widened noticeably here.

Queen Ansurek: 404 Pulls and a 0.98% Wipe

The final boss of Nerub-ar Palace was a multi-phase encounter built around portal management and coordinating against "Acolyte" adds in the final sequence. Liquid and Echo both ground through hundreds of attempts while the rest of the field was still working through the mid-tier bosses.

As Liquid closed in on their kill, Echo made a push. In what became one of the most memorable moments of the race, Echo ran an 18-hour session to try to catch up — and during it, suffered a wipe at 0.98% health. Less than one percent of Ansurek's total health pool separated them from a world first. They called the session, went to sleep, and Liquid secured the kill hours later.

Liquid's final pull count on Ansurek: 404. Echo needed 449. Method, finishing third, required 425 — benefiting from additional tuning adjustments by the time they reached the boss.

The final standings:

China's Return

The most quietly significant story of Nerub-ar Palace was in the standings below the top three. After the NetEase fallout had disrupted Chinese guilds' access to the game during Liberation of Undermine's era, The War Within brought Chinese players back to their own servers with something to prove.

Huoguo Hero finished World 4th — a strong result by any measure. Ji Tian Hong finished 5th, but what made their placement notable was the context: they endured 868 pulls on Queen Ansurek to see it through. That number is extraordinary. They absorbed everything the final boss threw at them and refused to stop. It was a statement about the depth of talent in the Chinese competitive scene even after a period of imposed disruption.

The Length of the Race

Nerub-ar Palace ran twelve days from Mythic opening to world first — the longest race in several years. The back-loaded difficulty curve, where the first half of the raid was manageable and the final three bosses created massive walls, meant that the race's decisive moments were all compressed into the final stretch. Guilds who fell behind on Ky'veza or the Silken Court never had a realistic path back into contention.

That structure produced a race with a long, grinding middle and a dramatic finish — exactly the format that generates the most community engagement, even if the guilds living through it would describe it differently.