Beetle

Beetle racing began soon after the release of the mount half-way through 2018. What started as humble squads, with improvised events that were held out in the open world formed into its own niche long before the time trials and the associated events were later added to the game by the end of the year. The addition of the race adventures gave a new impulse to the community, as racers began competing for better times on the leaderboards.

The newly added racetrack decorations paved the way for guild hall races on a whole different level, setting the stage for guild hall based racing tournaments with massive custom built race tracks. Between 2019 and 2020, these guild hall tournaments were held continuously, leading up to the biggest tournament ever in the beetle racing world championships in early 2021. We thought we had reached the pinnacle of beetle racing, with tight optimizations that relied mostly on maintaining speed and optimally timing your boosts. Little did we know that the best was yet to come.

In the weeks leading up to the world cup, two crucial developments took place that would change beetle racing forever. First, the release of the Speedometer tool made by killer, and the discovery of a new drift acceleration technique: Air Cancelled Sliding (ACS drift). ACS allows you to break the speed limit and gain speed while drifting and jumping, without having to rely on boosting, which completely changes how you approach beetle racing. Where previously you could only gain speed by boosting, now every drift is an opportunity to accelerate and go faster than your rival.
After the world cup the community saw an explosive growth in members and activity, with more and more racers trying and succeeding in mastering the newfound advanced methods. The website Beetlerank was created, which serves as a custom leaderboard where time trials are uploaded directly from the speedometer tool. New discoveries were made in the form of the hyperboost, a superpowered boosting technique where you drift and boost at the same time, and the drift hold, which lets you maintain the overspeed for long times. Even now there remains things that might’ve gone unnoticed, waiting for someone to find them.