It's been almost a week since the release of Destiny 2's newest raid 'Root of Nightmares' and there's already several controversies surrounding it. 

Raids are considered to be the pinnacle of PVE content in Destiny, especially on the first day or in some cases the first weekend. However, this did not seem to be the case this past weekend when World’s First occurred in less than 2.5 hours.

As soon as the raid is released, the race for World's First begins. Everybody vies to become the first Fireteam to clear the raid, the winners receiving fame, glory, and the coveted Destiny Raid Belt, a real-life WWE-style belt that has their usernames engraved onto it. It is not uncommon for World's First recipients to go on to be top Destiny streamers, making hundreds of thousands of dollars. The players’ names become etched into Destiny history and some World's First teams have even been in Destiny 2 trailers and added to the game's lore. 

Historically, World’s First for any new raid has varied from as little as 5.5 hours to as many as 18.5 hours. The difficulty stems from a variety of factors. Since Contest Mode is activated for the first weekend, it puts the player at a constant level disadvantage, making the enemies do increased damage and take decreased damage. In addition to this, raids are made up of a unique series of puzzles called “Encounters” which First Weekend players must figure out blind, without the help of YouTube tutorials or hints from the internet. It is precisely this immense difficulty that draws players in to join this momentous challenge. This is why many people were upset about the relative easiness of the raid, saying that the contest mode raid is meant for the game’s veterans and not for casuals or “newlights.” To this group, the incredibly short World’s First is seen as a joke and they think that Bungie is slipping in terms of quality. This year’s race was finished in 2 hours 25 minutes and 49 seconds. For a raid, this kind of speed is unheard of, and is the lowest time of any new raid in Destiny. While some players are upset about the lax difficulty, others are glad that the raid was easier, saying it's more accessible to casual players. The latter group thanks Bungie for making a raid they could actually finish and that even though World’s First was short, many players still found the raid to be quite challenging.

Most all raids only have a single day of contest mode, so the best point of comparison is the previous raid 'Vow of the Disciple' (which was also supposed to be a single day, but since there were server-side issues Bungie extended it to two days). Looking at the total number of team clears between Vow and Root shows a massive discrepancy. Vow had 5,300 teams clear contest mode. Root had 45,544 teams clear contest mode. Even if we are to account for some of Vow's server issues, it still is nowhere near the same amount. However, even with this difference, the numbers are not as simple as they appear. Some teams decided to clear Root multiple times, something not really seen with Vow. One player said their team finished it almost 20 times, each clear adding to the total count. With the help of Light.gg, a popular Destiny 2 website, the number of unique players that own the Contest Mode Emblem of each raid can be found, which should shed some light on the actual totals of players who completed each raid. About 35,000 players own the Vow Emblem, while about 55,000 own the Root Emblem. This is still quite a difference, but it isn’t as large as previously thought. Also, the Destiny community had known for a long time that Root would be a two-day contest mode, while it was only announced that Vow would be two days after Day 1 had already finished. This change in expectation may have pushed some teams to try and get the clear since they knew ahead of the raid that they would have more time.

For some, Root was finally a raid that could be cleared. Others found what should be an intensely difficult raid to be so easy, they completed it numerous times. As Destiny’s community continues to debate where the difficulty of raids should be, players can look forward to 2024 with the finale of Destiny 2’s ten-year story arc with the next expansion ‘The Final Shape.’