One of World of Warcraft’s top guilds leaves the game

Finnish World of Warcraft mega-guild Paragon has left the game’s raiding scene entirely.

“We have decided to stop raiding which obviously means we will not be a part of the world first race in Legion,” guild member Seita wrote on Paragon’s site. The hiatus largely resulted from Paragon’s continued struggle to arrange 25-man Finnish raid teams. The absence of a true 10-man option in WoW’s latest expansion was the nail in the coffin, as many felt international raiding wasn’t worth the trouble.

“Going forward I have no idea if we will be playing WoW in any capacity in the future,” Seita continued, “we will have to see what is the situation when Legion launches. In the meantime you might see some of us in the fields of Overwatch.”

Paragon has been a leading force in world-record raiding for years and specializes in Heroic 25-man raids. In Wrath of the Lich King, they were the first to beat Anub’arak and The Lich King himself. In Cataclysm, they were the first to down Nefarian, Sinestra, Ragnaros and Al’Akir. Paragon also commands several 10 and 20-man records for Mist of Pandaria and Warlords of Draenor, as well as many world-first runner-ups.

The guild’s departure comes as sobering punctuation to WoW’s decline. The game lost subscribers throughout 2015, with new expansions providing only short-lived spikes in activity. This eventually led Blizzard to black-box subscriber figures entirely, which only compounded player concerns.

Thanks, Kotaku.