WoW and Ukraine: How to Support War Relief Efforts
Today, Blizzard announced a limited edition Pet Pack for Ukraine that players can purchase to directly support war relief efforts through @BlueCheckUkraine. For $20 USD, players receive a yellow puppy pet named Sunny that is available for retail WoW, and Flurky, a blue Murloc pet for Wrath of the Lich King Classic. Together, Sunny and Flurky represent the colors of the Ukrainian flag.
Featured in the promotional video is none other than the prolific actor, Mila Kunis, who was raised in Ukraine until she was 7 years old before her family moved to the United States in 1991.
As an avid WoW player of many years, Kunis encourages our community to help support the cause:
According to Mila Kunis, the importance of giving to a charitable cause is that it makes us feel more invested and helps us stay involved. Kunis has always found the gaming community to be very welcoming and forward-giving – particularly the WoW community. You can join Mila Kunis and others in adopting Sunny and Flurky until August 29, 2023 at 10:00 AM PDT (17:00 GMT), to help support the relief efforts in Ukraine:
Source: Blizzard Entertainment
For further details on these special edition pets, please click here.
Many people in the WoW community echo Kunis’ sentiment of philanthropy and personal investment in a cause – whether that means supporting relief efforts through fundraisers, or banding together to create fun community tournaments and events to keep spirits up. Recently, the Ukrainian WoW Community hosted their very own Mythic+ Tournament. The event spanned 2 days and brought much of the community together, as Blizzard granted Tournament Realm access, and Raider.IO supplied an official Bracket.
Ukrainian WoW Community Mythic+ Tournament, Day 1
Ukrainian WoW Community Mythic+ Tournament, Day 2
Alongside Ukrainian casters Dwea, Vorpalsword, Elehia, MegaLobster, Bohatyr and Reikuu, many big names in the WoW community stepped up to join the Talent desk. Among these faces were multi-MDI champions and RWF competitors, Naowh and Meeres, and popular WoW host and caster, Psybear.
According to Heroicsolo, manager of the Ukrainian WoW community, the Mythic+ Tournament gave members more motivation and inspiration to participate in future tournaments:
“After this tournament some of our community players have obtained more motivation and one guy is planning to create one more M+ Tournament soon. I'm sure that our next events will be more massive and more interesting! Maybe we will organize some international events with some interesting rules. We’ll see!”
Pictured: The Ukrainian Community Mythic+ Tournament Bracket on Raider.IO
When we asked Heroicsolo what new things we can expect from the Ukrainian WoW Community in the near future, he shared some exciting plans with us:
“We're also developing our own addon which translates WoW (on Retail) to Ukrainian language, it's on Alpha version atm, but already contains ~80% of translated skills/talents/interface. Ukrainian players can download it from Curseforge here. Choose the Alpha version and you will already see a lot of Ukrainian texts. Another guy from our community (Molaf) is also developing an addon which translates other addons called AddonTranslator (Ukrainian). Therefore, our nearest plans are to finish the work with these addons, so all Ukrainians can play on English realms with our biggest Ukrainian guilds, even without knowledge of English!
We'll also be happy to see more Ukrainian WoW players in our friendly Discord community, which unites more than 20 Ukrainian guilds on EU realms.”
For further updates on the situation in Ukraine, Heroicsolo pointed out that their brave soldiers are successfully liberating occupied territories. The process has been very difficult and slow, but some progress is being made.
“Our civilians are amazing too. Almost every citizen of Ukraine tries to help our army/medicine/rescuers as they can: every day you can see a lot of fundraising initiatives created by different people. Recently, one Ukrainian Twitch streamer, Leb1ga, gathered something like 8+ millions UAH within just a couple of hours and donated that money to our army, so they have bought a car and several powerful drones! His plan was to gather only ~2.6 millions UAH just for one drone, but our amazing people have surprised him. So, you see, Ukraine is a very sympathetic nation. Almost every person in this country is ready to help other people at any moment!
Our army and our country still need more airplanes (especially F-16) to protect our air space from tons of russian missiles, drones etc. We also have some ecological problems like dry Kakhov reservoir and thousands of dead animals (because of the exploded Kakhov dam), and possible nuclear hazard (with probably all-European level of spread) because of the occupied nuclear power plant in Energodar. So we also need more attention to this war from all the world, not just because it's war, but also because it can become a world-wide problem if we will not return our territories as quickly as possible.”
If you’d like to get involved in supporting Ukraine, don’t forget to purchase your Pet Pack for Ukraine today and keep your eyes peeled for future Ukrainian WoW Community Mythic+ Tournaments, and fundraisers for @BlueCheckUkraine and other charitable causes.
Links
- Purchase your Pet Pack for Ukraine Today
- Donate to BlueCheckUkraine
- Follow the Ukrainian WoW Community on Twitter
- Follow the Ukrainian WoW Community on Twitch
- Join the Ukrainian WoW Community on Discord
- Subscribe to the Ukrainian WoW Community on YouTube
- Find Heroicsolo on Raider.IO
- Stay Updated on Charity Events at Raider.IO
About the Authors
VitaminP (VP) is the Content Manager of Raider.IO and has worked for the organization since the formation of the News Section in November 2018. Although VP is currently focused on pursuing her Masters of Business Administration, she specializes in tanking classes and has loved doing competitive Mythic+ on and off since early Legion.
Picco is an old-fashioned WoW gamer that started back in Vanilla and has played ever since. She is a healer by heart and is currently maining Restoration Druid. She loves Mythic+ and has a great passion for events like the MDI and TGP. Picco is part of the KeystoneMasters team and enjoys jiggling around with ideas for fun new formats of community tournaments. She is also a Mod for several streamers and guilds, particularly during the RWF. Outside of WoW, Picco is a Sprout in FF14, where she explores with her Lala Summoner.
