Update February 2, 2023 5:43 pm Eastern: Square Enix has officially removed the in-game titles from UNNAMED_’s clear and also asked its members to destroy the weapon from clearing The Omega Protocol Ultimate. As far as we know, the Dragoon who was seen in the video using the zoom plug-in has been banned. This has essentially nullified the team’s clear. Several more teams have since cleared the raid, with Neverland doing it first, followed by Aether Group 3. Neverland was the first to clear Dragonsong Reprise, but that clear was also surrounded by controversy over plug-in use. At this point, it’s really up to you to decide who holds the World’s First title for TOP, if it even matters. We have added clear VODs to the bottom of the post.
Update January 31, 2023 11:42 am Eastern: Producer and Director of Final Fantasy XIV, Naoki Yoshida, has released a lengthy statement regarding all the recent controversial topics surrounding The Omega Protocol Ultimate, including leaked videos of the fight’s ending and the fifth phase. The statement is more sternly worded than his previous release regarding Dragonsong Reprise and the biggest takeaways are that Yoshida is questioning whether creating Ultimate fights are worth it if cheats are going to be used to complete it. He also questions, as a gamer, why they would want to cheat in the first place to complete the Ultimate. He ends the post by saying he will not recognize the team as the true World First if the illicit use of third-party tools is made clear through their investigations — which, let’s be honest, is clear. I personally don’t think the team will stop developing Ultimates, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s only one per expansion moving forward. Clearly a lot of time and resources are spent into creating these fights and the last two releases have been surrounded by controversy. There is, of course, some real bright spots like MogTalk raising tens of thousands for charity and the community coming together to watch the race. Hopefully a few bad apples doesn’t spoil the bunch. The original story is below.
After almost 153 hours, The Omega Protocol (Ultimate) has been cleared by JP team UNNAMED_. The world’s first clear for the latest Ultimate raid in Final Fantasy XIV took a little less than six hours longer to complete than Dragonsong Reprise. For those who followed the Race for World’s First, UNNAMED_ was not one of the teams that were streaming, nor were they submitting logs to fflogs.com. So their clear seems to come out of nowhere, especially considering the top team the general public had any information on, Neverland, had only gotten to phase six — widely believed to be the final one — to 87.2%. Neverland was the team that claimed World’s First for Dragonsong Reprise and once again was not streaming their progression this raid.
This isn’t the first time UNNAMED_ has claimed a World’s First in Final Fantasy XIV. The team was also first for Abyssos: The Eighth Circle, or widely known as P8S for the eighth tier of Pandaemonium Savage.
The raiding scene in Final Fantasy XIV is a bit controversial, due to some teams using add-ons that are perceived to be an advantage. While Square Enix’s official stance is against third-party software, there has been some debate on enforcement. Many of the World’s First teams are often under scrutiny by the community, admittedly a loud minority, especially when proof is released that add-ons were used.
Not surprisingly, it didn’t take long for accusations to become public against UNNAMED_, with an unlisted YouTube video surfacing that shows a mod allowing one of the players to zoom out significantly more than the game allows.
It appears that most of the teams aren’t taking UNNAMED_’s clear seriously, as it’s clearly an advantage to use such a mod. In fact, one of the top teams that are streaming, Kindred, is already poking fun at it.
It’ll be interesting to see how Yoshi-P and team will (or won’t) recognize UNNAMED_’s clear as the World’s First. It’s mostly understood that many of the World’s First competitors will use some mods, especially knowing that other competitors are as well, but this one is a bit egregious. Whether the community will consider this to be the World’s First is another question.
It is a bit unfortunate that there aren’t better official standards for the Final Fantasy XIV raiding community. MogTalk, during its coverage for the World’s First race, had a great segment featuring Jeath from World of Warcraft (and now Final Fantasy XIV) sharing his thoughts around add-ons. The bottom line, it isn’t a level playing field and unfortunately yet another Ultimate clear is marred by the use of add-ons and the debate will continue.
Below is the leaked video showing the use of the zoom mod. Don’t be surprised if it gets removed.
