For most players, World of Warcraft: Classic Edition is a return to a long gone era, where it takes ages to level up, kill enemies, and complete quests. For others, it’s an opportunity to race against time and reason to try and be the first player in the world to reach level 60, the game’s level cap. Today, Twitch streamer Jokerd became that very person, reaching 60 on his Gnome Mage.
The race to get to level 60 before anyone else is obviously an intense feat, with most players sticking to guilds and collective effort to maximize their chances. Jokerd made it to 60 largely by himself, and is mostly playing and streaming solo. Jokerd used his mage-specific class abilities to round up and slaughter enemies around the world of Azeroth instead of chain-running dungeons with groups or the help of min-maxing Excel sheet guild science.
As Jokerd’s level climbed, he was able to tactically make use of Blizzard’s layering system in Classic, a feature designed to help offset the increased player population at launch. It’s designed to keep enemies, or mobs, spawning quickly to avoid players having to wait around, and Jokerd was able to use it to his level-grinding advantage by having friends invite him to their layer, avoiding waiting around for new enemies to mow down for experience points. Levels 55-60 are historically some of the roughest and most tedious levels to eke out in the Vanilla version of World of Warcraft, and this Classic-specific loophole was a big boon for Jokerd’s progression.
Jokerd’s breakout pace earned him a concurrent 350,000 viewers on his Twitch stream. He celebrated with players following his progress with a pile-on style parade in the Alliance city of Stormwind. After the congratulations for his impressive feat, Jokerd tried to log out and delete his character, something that can only be described as a 4-D power move. His followers on Twitch then bombarded him with mail; unopened mail in a character’s mailbox prevents the character being deleted.
All in all, Jokerd spent three days, 20 hours, and 40 minutes of Classic gameplay, which is calculated in real Earth time, to hit level 60, streaming over 78 hours of the journey on Twitch. Second and third place are as of right now unclaimed on Western servers, with the second-place runner up around level 56.
World of Warcraft: Classic is enjoying overwhelming success, with Blizzard needing additional servers to keep up with the unprecedented demand and unanticipated log-in queues for the nostalgic 2006 version of the game.