Mythic+ Charity Pro-Am: THE REPORT!

By Hulahoops — May 25 2021 18:00 UTC

It happened so fast and was over too soon, but for many, it was the experience of a lifetime. The inaugural Mythic+ Charity Pro-Am took place a little over a week ago on Saturday, May 15th. It was a day full of exciting dungeons, hilarious memes, and great competition. More importantly, it was a day where the World of Warcraft community came together to “Play for Good”, and we succeeded by raising over $23,000 for five amazing non-profit organizations!

The teams at Raider.IO, Complexity-Limit and Keystone Masters are proud that we were able to bring this event to the community, but we were absolutely amazed at the generosity we saw over the course of the broadcast. Our charity goals were smashed to pieces and we want to thank all of you that donated to the non-profit organizations, or contributed by spreading the word. You, the viewers, made this event a huge success!

The Event

The Mythic+ Charity Pro-Am was a one-day dungeon-racing competition where 8 teams battled it out in a single elimination bracket to determine the winner! The team format was the unique part of this event. The tournament organizers approached various MDI professional players and content creators to fill the first 3 spots of each team. 4 teams were created on EU servers, and 4 teams on NA/OCE servers. To fill the remaining 2 spots on each team, we held open calls for Amateur players! Eligible players that had between 800 and 1700 Raider.IO score were invited to register via the Raider.IO Discord for their chance at winning one of the 16 Amateur spots. Over the course of the registration week, we had OVER 1000 registrants! The lucky 16 people were picked via random lottery and assigned based on their role and experience to one of the 8 teams. They were so excited to be able to play in this tournament with some of the best MDI players in the world...but don’t take our word for it!

Holy Paladin Kinka, who quickly stole our hearts and earned our pogs (KinkaPOG!), was assigned to Press W Zug Zug, alongside Synecdoche, Naesam, and Kalamazi. She provided her thoughts on the Mythic+ Charity Pro-Am:

With the hundreds of people that were signing up for the tournament, I never thought I would get in. I never win anything, so I was ecstatic when I got the DM that said I was picked. It was a little intimidating at first to be competing with and against some of the best Mythic+ players in the world...so the fact that the Pros were encouraged to play other classes and roles really helped to put my mind at ease. The playful nature of the tournament made it so much fun and took all of the stress out of it. The positive notes and support from the announcers and the chat was very reassuring and made me feel more Pro than Amateur. I really hope that there are more tournaments like this in the future, both for myself and all of the other “Amateurs” that didn’t get a spot in it this time!

Here’s Kinka doing her best impersonation of a tightrope walker during the event, and nearly giving broadcaster Lythi a heart attack!

Unfortunately for Xytrixz, his team To The Moon did not make it past the first round of the tournament. However, his experience playing with Heruda, Rads and Wildi, was still one to remember:

I was working an evening at my job when my partner phoned me. She never phones me, so I was super surprised and thought something was wrong...she was in fact ringing me to tell me that I had just got a Discord DM to be in the tournament! When I found out, I was super excited! To be able to be part of an event that wound up raising as much money as it did was phenomenal, and to be rubbing shoulders with pros and huge influencers was an incredible feeling. I went in really wanting to win, so naturally I was a little disappointed to go out 2-0 in the first round, but that didn’t subtract from how much I really enjoyed being a part of it and how much I have learned from the time I spent playing with the pros.

The tournament as a whole was great too, seeing pros and influencers talking smack in Discord and being able to join in was good fun, and I love that I was able to be part of something that had such great production being it too, from on-screen graphics, to casters and analysts, and even being able to stream my own PoV for my team was amazing.

Another Paladin, this time of the Retribution variety, that was one of our Amateur participants was Ribz, who was assigned to the 2nd place team, Goosy Good. Under the expert guidance of Undad, Hunttay, and Xyronic, Ribz got to go all the way through to the final match!

When I first got the message that I was picked to be part of the Pro-Am I was eating breakfast. I was a little suspicious at first, but once I found out it was real, I was very excited to be part of a great community event for a good cause. It was an amazing experience to get to participate in an event like this and to play and learn from very talented people within the WoW community.

Being in the Goosy Good team and taking 2nd place was amazing! We were having an amazing time playing together, cracking jokes during the runs and cheering each other when one of us would “pop off” during a trash pull or on the boss. I would gladly do this event again in a heartbeat. Everyone that put this event together did an amazing job, and I can’t wait for the next one!

Ribz even got a special shoutout on stream from his big sister who donated on his behalf!

Our youngest competitor was 16-year-old Bane, who was part of the winning team Old But Gold! Bane got to play with some of the Mythic+ community’s most recognizable names in Petko, Jdotb and Naguura. Along with fellow Amateur teammate Xevu, the team of Old But Gold brought home the top prize of $4,000.00 for their charity, The Trevor Project. We asked Bane about his tournament experience:

So I was just doing a random dungeon and suddenly I got pinged on Discord and realized I’d been invited to play for the Pro-Am tournament. I didn’t expect that at all and was so surprised I almost started shaking from happiness. Later I found out I got in the team Old But Gold and I was quite happy that I already knew of everyone on my team. I thought I’d be anxious when I started playing with my team, but it was quite a nice and chill atmosphere, it felt like I was playing a game with some friends I’ve known for a long time. It was an amazing experience and I hope we’ll see this event again soon!

The main event broadcast took place on the Complexity Twitch Channel, and over the course of the 10 hour broadcast, we saw over 88,000 unique viewers tune in! On top of that, players were encouraged to stream their own PoVs to their personal channels, and we had thousands more viewers catch the action that way.

The Charities

We put this event together for a number of reasons, but the main goal was to raise as much money as possible for charity. Following the format of many Pro-Am events in traditional sports, we had our teams pick a non-profit organization to represent. The $10,000.00 prize pool, generously provided by our sponsors, was distributed to all 5 of the represented charities, proportionate to each team’s placement at the end of the competition!

The first place team, Old But Gold, secured a $4,000.00 pay day for The Trevor Project. The second place team, Goosy Good, won $1,500.00 for the Equal Justice Initiative, and the remaining 7 teams each earned $750.00 for their respective charities. But the buck did not stop there, no way! Over the course of the event, we encouraged viewers to help their favourite players support these amazing causes by donating directly to the charities of their choice. Additionally, proceeds from our event-exclusive merchandise provided by our sponsor Nations were also donated. We are blown away that as a result of the incredible generosity of the WoW community, we were able to provide over $23,000.00 total to the 5 non-profits.

The five charities that were beneficiaries of the Mythic+ Charity Pro-Am were The Trevor Project, Equal Justice Initiative, The AbleGamers Charity, Girls Who Code, and U.S.VETS. Click HERE to learn more about each organization, the inspiring work they do, and the teams that represented them!

The Sponsors

This event would have never gotten off the ground were it not for the generosity of our sponsors who believed in what we were doing through and through. We want to take this opportunity to once again thank them for their support and for helping us contribute to these great causes.

The Teams

We were fortunate enough to be able to put together some amazing teams for the Mythic+ Charity Pro-Am. Not only were our players exceptionally skilled, but they also knew that this was an event built around fun and excitement. We had players like Shakib on a Holy Priest, whose extensive experience on the spec included “healing some dudes in town”. Ellesmere and Nerf, staples of the high key pushing scene, swapped roles for this event. While Ellesmere tanked, and Nerf healed, teammate Automaticjak (known predominantly for his healing prowess), was on a Rogue!

The majority of our Amateur players filled DPS roles, but we did have a couple of standouts that took on the healing and tank roles for their teams! Kinka and Mojo showed that they are no slouches on the Holy Paladin and Resto Shaman, and Cremator had a pretty solid showing on the Disc Priest! The winning team, Old But Gold, had their Amateur player Xevu swap to Vengeance DH when things were getting serious...and he was tanking when they won it all!

Read more about the amazing team members HERE!

The Highlights

There is of course no greater highlight for the event than the fact that over $23,000 was raised for charity, but there were some moments throughout the broadcast that were certainly memorable! Many of these iconic moments were brought to us by our amazing broadcast talent, who you can read more about HERE.

We were treated with being able to watch Naguura in action as a Guardian Druid, not something that happens too often. While this may have taken some of our viewers by surprise, our caster Lythi was more than ready for it, with appropriate bear and Druid puns lined up:

The second place team of Goosy Good gave us a sneak peek at their super secret strategies that helped propel them to such an impressive showing throughout the tournament:

We mentioned one of our Amateur players earlier, Mojo, who put on a stellar performance throughout the tournament. Did you know he used to be a top raider? Our intrepid caster Psybearslat gave us the details:

Last but not least, the Mythic+ Charity Pro-Am meme to end all memes, was brought to us by Goosy Good’s Cadnanian, who quickly became a fan favourite. During their first match, some viewers noticed that Cad had an extra cast-bar on his UI. One such viewer mentioned that they would donate to one of the charities if Cad fixed his UI. Meeix was on the desk when this occurred and passed the message on. His UI was certainly “fixed” during the next game!

By the end of the tournament, things had gotten quickly out of hand. As more donations came in, the “cast-bars” grew. A whopping $500.00 donation was the price point for “one giant cast-bar” and it was quickly met! You have to see it to believe it, so take a look at this clip and experience first-hand what became known as cadBARS:

What's Next?

Not even one day after the Mythic+ Charity Pro-Am ended, we were getting asked “So, when’s the next one?”

This was an experimental and unique format that we brought to the competitive Mythic+ scene, but we are happy to report that due to the overwhelming success of the fundraising and the massively positive feedback from the community, we have decided that this will not be a one-time event...the Mythic+ Charity Pro-Am will be back!

Keep your eyes peeled for future announcements from Raider.IO, Complexity-Limit, and Keystone Masters about the next installment of the Mythic+ Charity Pro-Am! It could be your turn to play with the pros and raise some money for a great cause!

Charities

About the Author

Hulahoops has been playing WoW since Vanilla. If she’s not leading her Mythic Progression guild TBD through raids, she’s probably practicing for the MDI with her team Angry Toast. Hulahoops is a Holy Paladin in every sense of the term: she moderates the Hammer of Wrath Paladin Class Discord, and she was a practicing Lawyer for the last 7 years. Judgment isn’t just a spell! Hulahoops recently decided to put the law books away and follow her passion for esports by joining the team at RaiderIO and is now working as the Production Manager. She is also passionate about making Azeroth an inclusive, welcoming space for all gamers and is a proud co-founder of the Defias Sisterhood community.