A winner has been crowned in the Final Fantasy XIV Race to World First for the new Ultimate Trial, The Omega Protocol. UNNAMED_, a Japanese team that also won the Race to World First for the latest Savage Raids, has secured a clear of the duty and earned themselves bragging rights today.
The win comes out of left field for those who have been watching the race live for the last six days. UNNAMED_ hasn’t popped up at all on the stats page on FF Logs, which means that Neverland, the team that has been consistently on top and won the Race to World First for the last Ultimate race, is almost an entire phase behind UNNAMED_, who cleared the duty just hours after Neverland reached the last phase.
There were six phases in this Ultimate, one less than the last one, Dragonsong’s Reprise, which had seven phases in it. Players don’t even know what the last phase looks like because neither team that has reached it so far has been streaming or giving any visual updates of their progress.
The clear took a little over six days and eight hours, making it the second longest clear behind The Unending Coil of Bahamut (Ultimate), which took 11 days for a clear but was also the first Ultimate duty, meaning players were completely new to the difficult content.
Because the team hasn’t been streaming it, players are already questioning the clear. Final Fantasy XIV director Naoki “Yoshi-P” Yoshida has said in the past that he wishes no raiders would use third-party tools. But clears like this that pop up to the top of the logs quickly and without streams are often scrutinized and accused of using third-party tools that enhance their UI to make the game easier.
At time of writing, there is no data for how many pulls UNNAMED_ did or any data for what happened during those pulls. There will likely be some kind of video of the clear that surfaces, but teams that clear first typically will wait for a few more clears to release the video to respect those who are still fighting for second or third place.
Until more data or a video pops up, fans have started to congratulate the team on Twitter. No official congratulations have been made by the game’s official Twitter account and it might not since Yoshi-P mentioned after the last Ultimate that they may not offer up their congratulations anymore to eliminate any fierce competition and desire to use third-party tools.
Update 9:59pm CT: Fans on social media are largely declaring this World First illegitimate due to the use of third-party tools.
