World Of Warcraft Classic Nostalgia Explodes As First Player Hits Level 60 And Ragnaros Falls
It was 15 years ago when World of Warcraft first stormed the scene, and rather than look back fondly at the game's early days, developer Blizzard went and released a World of Warcraft Classic. It has proven to be quite the popular decision. Gamers have flocked to the classic MMORPG, and in short order, are already hitting the level cap at 60.
What makes this feat remarkable is how quickly the players have risen. WoW Classic just launched last Tuesday, and now less than a week later, hundreds of players have reached level 60. The first to do it was Jokerd, a 22-year-old streamer from Malta. He created a gnome mage and ranked up to level 60 in just 3 days, 20 hours, and 40 minutes, in front of 350,000 viewers.
You can check it out below, just be warned there is an abundance of loud, foul language. As such, it's NSFW (fast forward to around the 18:18 mark):
Following the achievement, Jokerd teleports to Stormwind where a proper celebration ensues. According to Jokerd, he reached level 60 on his own without sharing his account, getting 6-8 hours of sleep per day. He did it by soloing mobs, avoiding dungeons in the later stages of his progress, and using a technique called "layering," whereby a player joins and leaves groups to bypass the wait time for mobs to respawn, and to farm faster.
One important distinction here is that Jokerd is recognized as the first in the West to reach level 60. There's no confirmation about the progress of players in Eastern countries.
In addition to players hitting level 60, the Alliance guild <APES> is recognized as being the first to defeat the Firelord Ragnaros, the last boss of Molten Core. The guild did it with multiple level 60 players. According to AIPT, the guild spent years playing vanilla WoW on private servers, so the players had honed their skills.
The same players went on to defeat Black Dragon Onyxia, the only other major boss.
Even though some of the 'firsts' have now been claimed, WoW Classic is likely to remain popular for some time to come. WoW Classic's servers have stayed full since launching, with long wait times to get in. Thankfully, some additional servers (or "realms") were recently added, and more might be on the way.
Speaking of servers, I purchased a retired WoW server back in 2012 and snapped a bunch of pictures. If you're curious what the original servers looked like, check out our photo gallery tour.
