The rush to endgame in World of Warcraft Classic has crowned the first person to cross the finish line. After a marathon of 79 hours, a Gnome mage player by the name of Jokerd on the Mograine EU server has hit the MMORPG’s current level cap.
The race was coordinated by Method, one of WoW’s most famous guilds and no stranger to scoring world firsts, including being the first to clear the Mythic Uldir raid in WoW Retail among other feats. Jokerd made it to level 60 the old fashioned way: grinding mobs in the Plaguelands for XP. The last bit of XP was earned by attacking and killing a Scarlet Paladin.
Jokerd’s technique for hitting the level cap has reportedly drawn some ire from the community. While Jokerd earned his levels by mob grinding, he streamlined the process by taking advantage of “layering,” the system which creates multiple instances of zones in order to keep populations levels balanced. Jokerd jumped between instances of the Plaguelands in order to avoid waiting on monster spawns to occur naturally. One person associated with the Method level cap race, however, called the strategy “smart” and believed that using instance layering in that way was fair.
Surprisingly, Jokerd reportedly was about to delete his character but was halted from doing so by fans and viewers of his stream flooding his in-game mailbox with messages (recall that you cannot delete your character if you have unread mail). The messages were heard loud and clear and Jokerd promised to keep the character alive.
