Last year, @PwnStarzDotCom & I became the first max prestige players in the world for Call of Duty Ghosts. This year we look to do the same in Advanced Warfare, adding a 3rd dominant player to our team’s roster: @TheRealRon1224.

You can follow our progress at WeRankUp.com.

Because there is a lot of confusion surrounding the race to max prestige, I hope to clear some of that up in this post:

#TheRace is not the Race to Max Prestige

#TheRace started out as a “race” in that ErnestLe, TmarTn, GoldGlove & Jericho were trying to be the first players to reach max prestige in Black Ops 2 but they later stated that #TheRace is just their brand name and that they aren’t actually racing against anyone else. Aside from the irony of calling your brand #TheRace and then stating that you aren’t racing, the point is that there are essentially 2 races that have happened in the past 2 years. #TheRace is the charity stream comprised of the popular streamers and the actual race is where teams from around the world compete to become the first max prestige players in the world.

I’m not competing in #TheRace

Because of the misinformation above, #TheRace has become a term used to generically describe the real race and the brand name. While I’ve specifically stated several times that I’m not competing in #TheRace, the community tends to pit us against each other due to the name of their brand. My goal in Black Ops 2 was to become the first prestige master in the world and I accomplished that. It might be better if we used a different hashtag like #CODrace to describe the real race to max prestige but at this point #TheRace has become an ambiguous term which relates to both.

Racing to Max Prestige is NOT FAIR.

I hear a lot of people say that if you want to be the first max prestige player in the world that you need to compete fairly. This is entirely untrue. The first person to reach max prestige in a COD game has typically been the person who gets the game early and plays the game the most. That is the case for ErnestLe in MW3 and the same case for me in Black Ops 2. The multiplayer servers are already online for Advanced Warfare and most likely the first person to reach max prestige in this game is going to be someone who has the game right now and is willing to play it non-stop until they reach max prestige.

Racing to Max Prestige SHOULD BE FAIR.

Now this is something that I agree wholeheartedly with. Racing to Max Prestige SHOULD BE FAIR. It should be an official event sponsored by the developers with an official start time and official rules. It should be a competition that anyone can compete in, not only the people with connections or enough money to get the game early. Unfortunately, as much as I have requested it, no developer ever responds to these requests. I have also message @SHGames this year about this but to no avail.

To try and make the race to max prestige as fair as possible this year, I am working with as many teams as possible that I know of to determine a starting time which coincides with the embargo lift of the game. I will also be creating a race leaderboard where you can track the progress of all the teams as they level up. If you would like to add your own team to this list of competing players, contact @oTradeMark on twitter. I have outlined some generally agreed upon guidelines and rules below which I will get the competing teams to agree upon.

1. Most people compete in the prestige race as a team, trading off and taking turns playing on the same account. This is not a requirement, but if you want to be at the top of the in-game leaderboards as the first account to reach max prestige you will most likely want to participate in a team. Team size is not necessarily important, last year we won with 2 players but other teams had 3, 4 or even 5+ members rotating on the same account. I know a few people are going to participate in a “solo” race to max prestige, however due to it being much harder to verify that the leveling was done by a single person it’s harder to track and judge.

2. Stream or Upload your progress – In order to be considered the first legitimate max prestige players in the world you need to upload or stream your journey to max prestige somewhere online where other players can verify the legitimacy of your leveling process. The reason this is a requirement is that every year there are players which hack and modify the game in order to gain massive amounts of XP and cheat their way to the top of the leaderboards.

3. No cheating. Any exploits, hacking, cheating or boosting using people you know on the enemy team is against Xbox terms of service and will result in the community disqualifying you from being considered first.