World of Warcraft's No. 1 U.S. Raiding Guild "Limit" Shares Their Story And Saga With The Game's Rich Meme Culture

ormed in 2015, Limit rose to prominence in World of Warcraft slowly but steadily, eventually becoming the number one raiding guild in the United States as they duked it out with teams from all around the globe. In 2019, they made esports history by becoming the first competitive PvE-focused offering through their partnership with Complexity Gaming, marking a new chapter in the esports world that’s typically focused on PvP. Given WoW’s unique history with internet and meme culture (such as the legendary Leeroy Jenkins), not to mention Limit’s own part in the game’s meme-verse, we interviewed guild members Preheat and Tagzz about their story and role in Warcraft’s rich, meme-filled past.

Q: Hey, everyone. Hopefully, no one is too heavily impacted by the coronavirus outbreak. Did you manage to get some extra toilet paper before the panic? We’ll trade you for some hand sanitizer or Lysol.

Preheat: All of my toilet paper gets mailed to me normally so I think I’m safe from the great toilet paper shortage of 2020. Thankfully, COVID-19 hasn’t really affected me much since social distancing is how I live my life normally. Jokes aside though, I am very fortunate to have a job where I can still make ends meet from my home and thankful that all of my loved ones are safe and healthy.

Tagzz: I’ve been preparing my whole life for the quarantine.

Q: Has the guild noticed a big uptick in viewers as more people are “working” from home? Are there any other major impacts you’ve experienced during these strange times?

Preheat: I think everyone was kind of expecting stream viewership to go up, but, personally, I have seen a decline in my average viewers. I think that Twitch viewership as a whole has gone up, but a lot of people who would have been traveling or doing other things are locked down and have turned to streaming, which has caused viewers to shift around a bit. That’s my own speculation based on anecdotal evidence, but I’ve heard it echoed by some streamers way bigger than me (like Ezekiel_III).

Tagzz: I don’t stream myself, but I have definitely seen an uptick in my own slacking off.

Q: Ok, so let’s start out by going over the basics. Can you tell us about the background of Limit and how it began? What has the guild been up to lately, and what’s the current focus on?

Preheat: Limit was formed in March 2015, but the guild was very different back then. Originally it was a group of friends who had just come back to WoW from a game called WildStar. A lot of the best WoW players had swapped to that game and gotten together to form a group there, and when we finished playing that game, we decided we wanted to continue playing together. The guild master at the time had a poll for what we should call the guild, but named the guild Limit even though it wasn’t even suggested. At the time, people really hated the name, but it’s grown on us. Limit didn’t start going for World Firsts until September 2018 for Uldir. Since then, the guild has continued to evolve. In October 2019, Complexity partnered with Limit, and this February, we achieved World First in Ny'alotha!

Tagzz: To build off Preheat, I believe the name with the most votes was Elephant Herd, but the old guild master (Truefire) hated that. So to compromise, his choice was one nobody wanted.

Q: How did you guys first get into World of Warcraft? What’s your history with the game, and why is it special to you?

Preheat: Back in my middle and high school days, we had LAN parties at my friend Alan’s house every weekend. We used to play all sorts of MMOs together, but I remember when World of Warcraft came out we instantly knew this one was special. We all had a lot of fun together, but over time, people burned out and quit the game, except for me. I continued to play and ended up getting into a semi-serious raiding guild when I was 15 (although I told everyone I was 18). Despite how awful raiding was in vanilla, I really enjoyed the experience of group puzzle solving. I played off and on over the years, taking breaks to explore other interests, but I always ended up coming back to the game. In Cataclysm, I ran my own guild, but towards the end of the expansion, it was apparent to me that the people I played with weren’t taking the game as seriously as I was. I ended up applying to a better guild and getting accepted. That guild is where I met Max and Tagzz. It’s the typical story for most of us raiders, we ended up playing and taking the game more seriously, and, eventually, made a network of peers that got us into better guilds.

Tagzz: I started playing in 2004 because of my older brother, but I was not very good at all. I initially just liked exploring and the "little" things in the game. It wasn't until 2011 when I started playing the game more seriously and more than any other game. At the time, I started to get competitive, and my drive to keep improving purely came from trying to be better than my brother, and once that was the case, I was already hooked on the game's endless possibilities for min-maxing and competition. Once I had reached as high as I could pretty much go in the competitive PvE scene, my enjoyment came more from the group problem-solving dynamics than just trying to get personally better. I think the two weeks every ~six months that we all get to bash our heads against the new content is everyone in the guild's favorite thing by far now, and it's not even close. Those small windows are the reason we all play, save for truly rabid fans of the game in the guild.

Q: Was the intention from the start of Limit to always be an ultra-competitive, top-tier guild, or did it evolve into that over time?

Preheat: The initial idea of the guild was actually the exact opposite of what we are today in terms of our “goals.” When the guild first formed, it was in the wake of the decline of North American raiding. This was around when Blood Legion started to die and everyone joining our guild from there was done trying for World Firsts. The idea was just to be a guild that barely raided but still got decent ranks. Over time, we recruited new members who were more hungry for World Firsts. It wasn’t until September 2018 (more than three years after we formed) that we actually decided to go for a World First.

Tagzz: Like Preheat said, it was the exact opposite. Our original goal was to take it easier (relatively speaking of course) and aim for the top 20 world. Our first tier, we got world 7th completely surpassing our own expectations, and from there, we only just wanted to keep building on that rank. It was that mentality of “at least don’t drop in rank” that eventually led us to consider taking the leap to compete for the World First. The thing with the race to World First is it really is just a 2-5 horse race really, and I don’t want that to sound arrogant. It’s just there are only 2-5 guilds ever at a time that are really putting in the time required to compete. If one guild puts in 16 hours a day, there’s not really any way they get beaten by any other guild that isn’t putting in the same time. Over the years, the race as a whole has evolved in an arms race sort of way.

Q: So how did the guild get into streaming and why? What were those initial years like, and how did you build a following?

Preheat: Initially the guild was very against streaming. Back when we first formed, none of the top guilds streamed their progress. Everything that happened in the World First Race was behind closed doors and the only way to “consume” it as a fan was to talk in forums and refresh the Manaflask website. Over time, attitudes changed and streaming as a whole started to take off. Mainly the decision to stream was just based on Method doing it. We saw that there was interest in the race and started to see it more as an event, as opposed to just a labor of love. With Blizzard taking a harder stance on RMT (Real Money Transactions) and us losing our main source of income from the game (carries for real money) it just made sense to try and find other ways to monetize what we do. Building a following isn’t easy, but we have had good partners help jumpstart our streams, such as Northern Gaming, in the past. Now we have added support for our fantastic partner Complexity. What we do is a lot different than most esports, and I think people find it very interesting. If you watch someone stream for 16 hours a day, for two weeks, it’s easy to get invested, and they’ll usually continue to watch that person afterward.

Tagzz: For years the race was extremely secretive, and honestly it wasn’t until Method started streaming that it was even considered. Even still with Method streaming, we did not stream ourselves for two more tiers. You will still have some people that oppose streaming the race (myself included, I’m a hater), but I think overall it’s definitely been a net positive for everyone, and because of Method, it has brought a lot more interest into this awesome little corner of World of Warcraft.

Q: Do you think your relationship with WoW as a form of enjoyment has changed significantly since you started streaming and getting into the competitive side of things? Any regrets?

Preheat: Streaming to me is pure enjoyment. I work full-time at a day job, so I don’t really use it as a source of income (although it's a great side hustle). The main thing that has changed over time is my relationship with World of Warcraft in general. As the game becomes more RNG and grindy, it’s hard to be as enthusiastic as I once was. That being said, my drive to do well in the game and play competitively keeps increasing over the years. Every time I think I have reached the peak of how much I can focus my efforts, I end up exceeding it and becoming even more focused. I’ll give you an example, I took off a month from work to prepare for the race this tier, and in that time, I grinded islands so hard that I was the first player in the world to reach level 80 on my neck (the softcap), beating out people in the guild who are known for basically playing 24/7. There was obviously no prize for this, I just did it to prove to myself that I can still go all in.

Tagzz: I touched on this earlier, but my form of enjoyment has definitely changed over time. Having played the game for 16 years now, I have basically already done “everything.” At this point, my one and only favorite thing is raiding all day to try and kill bosses first with 25 of my friends. All the grinding outside of the race to prepare can get almost chore-like, but it’s worth it of course.

Q: Tell us about the historic partnership with Complexity Gaming. How did that start, and how has the relationship transformed the guild?

Preheat: The Complexity partnership started when some old-school WoW fans with a “bit” of sway in decision making over at Complexity decided to take an interest in us. At the time, we were fielding multiple options for partnership deals, but they stood out because they were both competent and also “got” WoW, which is a really rare combination. Plenty of organizations can look at metrics from Twitch and the hours viewed and see an opportunity, but very few understand World of Warcraft. When Max and I met with Fantasy and Beef at the Gamestop Performance Center in Frisco, we were pretty impressed with the facilities (to say the least). We also really felt that Complexity understood our value and vibed with us. This was the main reason we decided to enter the partnership with them. Since then, I think it’s been pretty obvious how well the partnership has ended up. We recently had our event at the GSPC, and it was honestly perfect. A lot of our time outside the race is spent watching and cheering our teams on the big screen. I think I speak for most of the guild now when I say we care about esports a lot more in general. I can only say good things and I can’t wait to see how this partnership continues to evolve over time!

Q: What do some of your family and friends think about you guys becoming part of the esports world? Are they confused by it, or elated you managed to turn your passion for WoW into a career?

Preheat: Like I mentioned before, I also have a career outside of the game. I am also happily married. My wife totally gets what my goals are and has always supported my decisions, and I’m really fortunate to have her as a partner. My family, friends, and coworkers try their best to understand it and support me, but a lot of them are just too normal for it to click (God bless them for trying). Keep in mind that until about a year ago, what we did wasn’t seen as really having any monetary worth. Honestly, I’m not even sure if I understand the esports world, but I’m here for it!

Tagzz: I actually have a career outside of the game (which creates a huge time crunch for me as I try to keep up), but I’ve turned some of my coworkers into Limit’s #1 fans. We are IT nerds, so it’s not odd to them. As for my family and close friends, they know how much I played games growing up, so, if anything, they’re just glad it amounted to something.

Q: Give us some insight into your lives as streamers. Is it as great as people imagine, or is it harder than it seems from the outside?

Preheat: I spent a year of my life streaming full-time, and, honestly, it was way more work than my day job now. Sure, it’s fun to work from home and be your own boss, but there is also a lot of anxiety when your livelihood is directly tied to your performance as an entertainer. Finding a good work-life balance is almost impossible when every minute you aren’t online is dollars you are losing. Now that I stream as supplemental income, I have found that I enjoy it a lot more.

Q: What’s your community/following like? How does Limit give back to them?

Preheat: My following is pretty small personally, but the guild as a whole has a huge following. As one of the founding members, someone who makes a lot of decisions in steering our organization and the guy who made the logo, I think it's awesome to see how far we have come. From the beginning, I have always prioritized creating a brand with Limit, even though when we first formed most of our members opposed what I was doing. A lot of the goals I had for the guild have already been accomplished (like having over 25k followers on Twitter). I am much more invested in the Limit brand than my own and very excited about how we continue to grow.

Q: Can you tell us a little about some of the unique emotes in your channel? Where did they come from, and what’s the story behind some of the community’s favorites?

Preheat: Limit as a guild is basically a meme factory. I create most of our Discord emotes, and a lot of them end up on Twitch as well. One of the biggest culture shocks for new members joining is that we ban using ultra-common Twitch memes (such as KEKW, MonkaS, LUL) in favor of making our own. In a lot of ways, we are trendsetters because we are so prolific with our memes. A lot of guilds in the WoW space end up using the memes we cook up, and every time I see something I helped create floating around out there, it makes me very proud of the Limit community. I don’t think we would have that secret sauce if we just copied and pasted the common memes like everyone else.

Q: Does anyone recognize guild members out in public? How are those interactions with fans out in the wild? Do you have any particularly interesting ones that stick out?

Preheat: I only really get recognized at WoW-related events, but other members in the guild have been recognized across town. Funny story, my friend used to work downtown here in Austin at a bar called “The Jackalope.” My wife and I made a habit of going there for burgers, sometimes for drinks. We ended up meeting some of my friends' coworkers because of this. One day my friend was talking with one of his coworkers about how much of a nerd he was, and she replied back that she was a way bigger nerd because she played a lot of World of Warcraft. Just so happened that she knew who I was because we actually played together years back. The craziest part is she was the one who waited on us on my wedding night when my wife and I snuck out to go hit up a bar after the ceremony. We didn’t know at the time that we knew each other from World of Warcraft!

Q: What’s it like working with companies and sponsors? How do they approach you, and which ones do you enjoy collaborating with?

Preheat: Working with companies and sponsors is interesting, and has certainly been hit or miss for us in the past. We entered into our first partnerships with basically no experience, but have learned a lot over time. We have definitely dodged a couple of bullets in the past with some especially predatory deals, but I think as a guild we have matured enough now to spot the red flags. Having Complexity as a partner has brought along a lot of incidental partnerships, and we have enjoyed those so far. As interest grows in the Race to World First, our options grow as well. It’s very exciting!

Tagzz: While we have some people on our team with a little more experience (especially Azorea!), we had to learn a lot about the business side of things as we went. We had some early sponsor deals completely fall flat, and we have definitely had some … interesting … offers before, but I think the companies we work with now are incredible, especially Complexity. Most simply approach us on Twitter or via our business email, as you would expect, but also BlizzCon has opened a lot of opportunities from networking there.

Q: Do you have any favorite moments from streaming over the years? Anything particularly noteworthy?

Tagzz: There are so many memorable and funny moments that we had to set up a repository of sorts to keep track of them all.

That is one of the best parts about streaming -- we now have recordings/clips of our favorite moments of the race to look back on since we stream with all voice comms. This video is a pretty good summary of the recent race with some memorable clips:

Preheat: I mentioned it before, but Limit is a full-on meme machine. Most of those memes are exported via Twitch or Twitter, but a lot of them remain in-house. We have four separate channels dedicated to memes, each is distinctly different communities and ecosystems. I wouldn’t normally share from our internal meme stash, but since this is an interview for a website dedicated to memes, I will give you a guided tour. The meme vault serves as an archive of memes that grows over time. Think of it as the greatest hits:

Preheat: Next up is Gromnak Screenshots. This channel originally was a place for us to post pictures of one of our members when he got lost between bosses, but eventually evolved into an archive and discussion of all things in the spirit of Gromnak, the meatheaded warrior. A good example of this was when Soar Carl shot his Gfuel.

Preheat: Ruin’s pirate cove is mostly just a 4chan aggregator channel with a dash of shitposting, not pictured for our own sake, due to excessive dankness of memes. This brings us to our last stop, a channel of pure shitposting. Yeah, I don’t really understand it either.

Q: What about notable events from WoW over the years (like the Corrupted Blood Incident), which are some of the funniest that’ve happened since Vanilla that stick out or have a special place in Limit’s history?

Preheat: At the start of this tier, Method had a WeakAura that counted mobs you pulled in islands. For some reason, they decided not to release it publically, stating that the community couldn't have it because they didn’t want us to get it. Since islands are already the easiest content in the game, it was hilarious to us that they would try and keep something like that locked down. That didn’t last long since the guy who makes their WeakAuras accidentally leaked it on stream. We took the WeakAura, “rebranded” it as Complexity Limit Island Tools as a joke and shared it with the community.

He would have called it Complexity Limit island tools but would have been a MUCH worse acronym. https://t.co/1OpqYag88c

— max (@maximumwow) January 18, 2020

Preheat: Memes ensued and it was a good laugh for us here in Limit, especially when the member who leaked the aura threatened the wrath of the addon and WeakAura community.

Imagine thinking you stole a working version LimitGuild</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/Preheat1337?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">Preheat1337 but thanks for testing our defenses before we unleash the full power of the AddOn and WeakAuras community during this race pic.twitter.com/8lkfQyOhvt

— Nnoggie (@methodnnoggie) January 18, 2020

Tagzz: At the start of 2019, Blizzard actually had a minor benefit for being Alliance right before a particular raid came out. Since you are able to spend gold for in-game services such as faction changes and we have a lot of gold, we transferred our entire guild to Alliance. For the benefit, you had to PvP, so we invaded a Horde city. We transferred back to Horde shortly after. To this point, we wondered why Alliance players were always camping flight paths to kill Horde, but then we understood. It’s great; would recommend.

Q: If I asked Limit to rank every expansion of WoW in order of best to worst, what would you say?

Tagzz: Most of us will value the quality of the raid content (and also Challenge Modes/Mythic+) over most other things, so I think the consensus would be something like:
* MoP / WoD
* Legion
* BfA
* WotLK / Cata
* BC/Classic

It probably seems blasphemous to many that we as a group would put Wrath/BC/Classic so low, but the raid content nowadays is by far more difficult, challenging, and well designed. BfA and Legion had great raids, but worse class design and far too many “grindy” elements compared to MoP and WoD.

Q: WoW has been a staple of internet culture and memes for quite a long time, what are some of your favorite Warcraft memes from over the years and why?

Tagzz: I’m partial to any Lorgok/Gromnak Twitch clip. I know Preheat’s favorite is:

Preheat: EVEN DEATHWING IS JEALOUS. I am a collector and connoisseur of all World of Warcraft memes, past, present, and future. My current favorite meme producers are Fronkacean, limit_maximum, and Gromnak.

Q: Any special memes featuring the guild or some you’ve made personally?

Tagzz: When our older members are corrupted by the influence of Zoomer memes:

Preheat: Let me tell you a story about one of our hunters named Dossou. He is an old friend of mine and one of my favorite people. Dossou also tends to be a meme magnet in this guild, he is a real character. Last tier, Dossou had terrible luck with his loot on his hunter. Our other hunter Ftbubbler had insane luck. Hunters weren’t especially good, which lead to Dossou swapping to his shaman Lavabanger much to his dismay, which spawned a ton of memes like this:

Preheat: At the time, Dossou was also very on edge, which led to daily outbursts. The epic redemption arc happened this tier when Dossou drew the reverse Uno card and ended up becoming one of the most geared players in the world. On Vexiona, he absolutely annihilated the damage meter. Dossou was in rare form, and it spawned all sorts of memes like this during the race.

Preheat: But the good times couldn’t last. Due to an unfortunate run-in with Blizzard customer support, the character was banned for a year. Because of this, he had to make a new character “Ongodnocap.” This story is ongoing, so if you want to follow the rest of the Dossou saga, make sure to watch us on Twitch.

hey WarcraftDevs</a> my account (Dossou#1170) got banned for RMT when I&#39;ve only been doing gold sales for the past 2 years (since you started banning for RMT). Gallywix mailed me 7.5 million gold maybe thats why</p>&mdash; Dossou (LimitDossou) March 12, 2020

Q: For anyone who wants to get into streaming themselves or even follow in your footsteps, what’s the best advice you can leave people with?

Preheat: My only advice would be to not get discouraged when you start off, because building an audience takes time, and that’s true even for folks in esports organizations. If you enjoy what you’re doing, then keep it up.

Check out Limit's social on Twitter and stay updated on the latest news via their website. Follow Preheat on Twitter, and watch his content on Twitch or YouTube for more.