The WoW Factor ends its first season of events with a grand finale on Deathwing US Horde.
After twenty-four events spanning more than six months, the WoW Factor is now going into hibernation in preparation for Mists of Pandaria, but our finale on Deathwing was certainly a great way to end our first season of transmogrification events. Attendance was booming, with numerous visitors from other realms joining the Deathwing population to turn Sunfury Spire into a hive of activity long before the event itself began.
The regular WoW Factor hosts were once more joined by Caylena as the guest judge for the week. It was her sixth outing as a guest judge, but this event seemed more relevant than ever, as Caylena is a Deathwing local player herself, and had been eager to see a WoW Factor event on the realm since we first began.
You can follow along with the commentary from Caylena and the other judges on Elvine’s TwitchTV stream, and there are plenty of pictures of participants on Facebook.
Facebook Screenshot Gallery Link
A season finale obviously needs to end with a bang, something which our sponsors undeniably delivered. The prize package, consisting of 100,000 gold, three Blizzard store mounts and one store pet, was donated by the hosts of the Thoranar TwitchTV livestream channel, Thoranar and Brilynn. Their generous sponsorship represents the largest prize fund to date, in real-currency terms, an excellent note on which to finish the first season of events.
You can follow along with Thor and Bri in their own prepration for the new expansion, by clicking the banner link below.
We’ve seen a lot over the past twenty-four WoW Factor events, dozens of realms, thousands of outfits and innumerable attempts at trolling, but Patch 5.0.4 brought us one little extra surprise for our final Cataclysm show. The addition of cross-realm zones was at first a source of confusion when scheduling the Deathwing event. We discovered that Silvermoon City on Deathwing was attached to a Pacific server and adopted that timezone for the in-game clock, whereas Deathwing realm as a whole runs on Mountain time – potentially a scheduling disaster! We did our best to forewarn of the misleading times and thankfully the eventual turnout was big, even bigger than expected infact.
As potentially puzzling as the timezone changes could be, the cross-realm zones did have a positive impact on the event, by allowing players from other realms to attend the event ‘live’. Previously, those from other realms have had to either watch the livestream or create level one characters in order to view a show, but now they can visit on their main characters. We would not actually be able to trade prizes to extra-realm visitors, which would go against the idea of providing a community event for Deathwing anyway, but it was great to see spectators from elsewhere. Who knows, perhaps one day we’ll be able to stage a true cross-realm transmog contest.
Competition Outline
The event was divided into two rounds, the first being the so-called ‘Random Round’, where we awarded multiple prizes of various sizes. For the second round, nine characters were shortlisted to receive the top prizes. Of these nine, three were selected as runners-up and three as overall winners, receiving the top prizes of the night.
As a bonus, during the break between rounds 1 and 2, one of the sponsors awarded a prize to their favourite outfit on Deathwing, seperate from the WoW Factor team.
Top 3 & Runner-Up Gallery
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Top 3 & Runners-Up
Round 2: The top three outfits of the night were awarded a Blizzard store mount of their choice. Three runners-up were awarded a consolation prize of 2000 gold each (6k total):
Top 3
Altiuin (Plus 4000 from Round 1)
Fróstbitez (Plus 3000 from Round 1)
Toughlove (Plus 4000 from Round 1)
Runners-Up
Bwg (Plus 4000 from Round 1)
Curse (Plus 4000 from Round 1)
Zanh
Bonus Round – “Bri’s Choice Award”
In between Rounds 1 and 2, co-sponsor Brilynn awarded a Blizzard store pet to her favourite outfit of the night:
Svarya (Plus 3500 from Round 1)
Random Round
Round 1: Selected outfits were awarded between 1000 and 4000 gold until we had expended our total prize fund for this stage of the competition (94k total). Names are listed under prize totals below:
4,000 gold
Galvatron
3,000 gold
Clemmentyne / Crazybenny / Pandaeye / Syphira / Valandra / Voodooshock / Zolari
2,500 gold
Cozmic / Darkmiroku / Frostinips / Germadin / Gygan / Littlebear / Mattyr / Menohealyou
Safteypin / Sentra
2,000 gold
Abyron / Ànisa / ßeasty / Bitterleaf / Christaline / Flimflam / Pharmakeiá / Salvick / Sicorant
Zarieline
1,500 gold
Xayben
Final Words
That brings us to the end of the first season of the WoW Factor! Thanks to all of the participants, sponsors, guest judges and assistants for helping the project to continue providing weekly events for such a long time. A further thanks goes to Keelhaul who, whilst having stepped down four months ago, was the conceiver of the WoW Factor project, and the driving force behind the first ten events.
Be sure to keep an eye out for details of our return, but in the meantime… enjoy Mists of Pandaria!
