Final Fantasy XIV’s latest Ultimate’s world first race comes to an eventful end

The race for the world first clear of the latest ultimate raid in Final Fantasy XIV (FFXIV), Futures Rewritten Ultimate (FRU), has ended! The Race for World First (RWF), hosted by Echo Esports and MogTalk, followed groups fighting for the first clear. The event also proudly supported the charity Games for Love. Broadcasted live on Echo’s Twitch channel, the event flipped through the fight’s top contenders. One such contender was Echo’s own in-house raid team. Other key contenders were the eventual winners, Kindred, as well as the runner up team, Lucrezia.

For those unfamiliar, Ultimate raids in FFXIV represent the pinnacle of challenge in the game, explicitly designed to push a team of eight players to their limits. These battles demand flawless coordination across multiple phases, each requiring the execution of dance-like mechanics with perfect precision. FRU was no exception, requiring players to master five demanding phases before they could claim victory.

As the race progressed, two teams, Echo and Lucrezia, reached the final fifth phase. Both appeared to be close to claiming the world first title, with Kindred not too far behind. However, the race took an unexpected turn when an off-stream team, GRIND, announced that they had already beaten the fight.

In a now deleted X post made by a member of the GRIND support team, there is an image taken of one of the team member’s perspectives that people quickly realised might include a cheeky third-party tool. The image showed a small, easy to overlook dot in the centre of the screen. This tiny dot suggested the use of a plugin designed to show the player their exact hitbox pixel.

Final Fantasy XIV’s producer and director, Naoki Yoshida, firmly opposes third-party tools. These tools have always been strictly prohibited in FFXIV. In this Ultimate race prior to FRU’s race, another off-stream team used third-party tools to gain an advantage over other teams. In an official statement after this incident, Yoshida said “if the presumption is that this content will be tackled and cleared with the use of third-party tools, then any reason to develop high-difficulty battle content seems to be lost. It’s very difficult for me to understand as a gamer what the meaning behind using numerous third-party tools to compete to clear first would be.” 

Although GRIND cleared first, the discovery of the tool led to an investigation into their potential third-party tool usage. The RWF coordinator clarified that the GRIND team did not condone the use of this tool by their team member. Regardless, this investigation concluded with GRIND’s disqualification.

The disqualification meant the event’s world-first title was back up for grabs. After staying up for 20 hours trying to clear, Echo decided to call it for the day, exhausted. During their break, Kindred seized the opportunity and secured the clear, with Lucrezia following mere minutes later. 

By the time of Kindred’s triumphant clear, the event had raised over $20,000 USD for Games for Love.

Congrats, Kindred!