By Alec Meer on November 14th, 2008 at 6:18 pm.
What? How? Why? The fricking thing only went on sale yesterday, and already one player’s managed to ding level 80. I’ve been playing most of today, having arduously just hit level 71 a moment ago, and even that’s enough to make my eyes scream and my brain weep. 80?
There’s no word from the player her/himself as yet, but Wowinsider theorise they had a pet Priest with them to make the journey that much easier. That I can believe, but it’s the actual time involved that confuses me. If they bought the copy at midnight on Tuesday and played solidly, that would have given them 30 hours all-told. Is that possible, WoW mathematicians? It doesn’t seem to be shenanigans, as we can all see the dedicated warlock’s armory profile. I’m sure she’s looking forward to a lonely week of having no-one to team up with up. But gratz’n'all.
My own second day in Northrend’s been a fairly WoW-standard one, though it does keep on throwing agreeably inventive quests at me. I turned into a hawk for a while, I wore a golem suit and I took a ride on a giant harpoon. Then I ran WoTLK’s first two dungeons, neither of which especially impressed me. There’s some nice graphical show-offery in the Nexus, but it all felt terribly familiar. As did the struggles to form a group for it. I know you’ve got to be precise for the later raids, but I’d hoped the early 5-man instances would be ameanable to a fairly mongrel group. Not so. It’s not just a matter of getting the right classes, but the right spec of the right classes, and of course players that pretty on the ball. There wasn’t too much wiping involved at least, but it was a right pig to sort out. Yeah, it’s a bit more sociable than WAR’s anonymous pile-ons, but they’re so much easier to orchestrate.
What I have noticed, though, is that Lich King is very much WoW reverting to type. The otherworldly, sci-fi elements of The Burning Crusade have been dialled back in favour of a straighter fantasy landscape, and while that sounds duller on paper, it really suits the game. Forests and ice floes feel a lot better suited to exploration than the more contrived, setpiecey alien environments of TBC.
But God, level 80? In a day?
14/11/2008 at 18:25 shon says:
I always like to picture those kinds of players on their death beds. They sit alone, surrounded by get well cards from their guildmates. They look back on their life and say “Hey, remember that time I hit level 80 in less than two days on that game no one remembers?”
14/11/2008 at 18:25 Alex says:
It could be that more than one person was playing on the account for those hours. I don’t think I’d be able to focus on my computer screen after being up for 30 hours.
14/11/2008 at 18:27 alphaxion says:
my girlfriend dinged 80 weeks ago… that was in the beta tho. And the time it took her I can say this fella’s efforts are certainly heroic!
I bet they have another level 70 that they’re putting the real time and effort into, that char will be their high end mule/alt.
14/11/2008 at 18:29 Bema says:
That’s because you’re not a real man Alex. The rest of us internet folk can skip sleep and keep focus for anywhere up to 50 years.
14/11/2008 at 18:33 Downloads_Plz says:
http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=26499
There’s an interview with the person explaining how he did it.
Basically, Warlocks > God.
14/11/2008 at 18:33 Tei says:
There are diffent type of players, and a MMORPG able diffent types of gameplay. The Powergamer is like that. He, or she, will beat anything always, killing stuff in record time, and maximizing PX troughput to the max. And thats what a Powergamer make him/she happy.
I have some powergamers friends, and is like a virus, sadly enough because I also have all the other virus: griefer ,RP ,pvp and crafting. My favorite gameplay is Griefer/Roleplayer. Is kind of … playing Austin Powers, as Dr Evil.
14/11/2008 at 18:33 PleasingFungus says:
It was one person, playing with a pet priest, as you speculated. They actually managed it in 27 hours, not even 30. Also, they’re French. Here‘s an interview with him.
Thanks, Kotaku!
(Man, the preview’s glitching up oddly. That or I’ve done something terribly wrong. If no “thanks” show up before the “Kotaku”, then… I guess the comment-submitting form is broken? Well, I’ll see.)
14/11/2008 at 18:34 PleasingFungus says:
(Okay, it was just the previewer that was broken. Very odd. It was missing everything between “Here’s” and “Kotaku.” Something to do with the s, I guess.)
14/11/2008 at 18:40 PHeMoX says:
It has “marketing trick” covered all over……
more likely either someone has figured out how to exploit things, or this ‘person’ isn’t real. I mean, come one… one freaking day.
14/11/2008 at 18:42 meeper says:
Is gaining a level still referred to as dinging? I remember that from my days in EQ, but haven’t heard the term in years.
14/11/2008 at 18:45 Sithinious says:
Is that the same Nymh that makes all the you tube vids?
14/11/2008 at 18:50 Tei says:
( @PleasingFungus: I love the pink background color of Kotaku. Note: NSFW )
14/11/2008 at 19:27 Funky Badger says:
*sobs* I read some of those forums… aiiigghhhhh, my eyes…..!
14/11/2008 at 19:33 Nick says:
Now watch as he complains he has nothing to do after a week.
14/11/2008 at 19:37 PFC Skinner says:
I think i may be dyslexic – I read that as “Craig Pearson hits level 80″ and thought “Woo! Go PCG!”. Less misleading headlines in the future please.
14/11/2008 at 19:51 Jesucristo says:
That’s the problem with MMORPG’s, the only thing you can do is level up and chat.
14/11/2008 at 20:19 Izirath says:
It’s the guy that spent 27 hours out of party healing him that gets me. He doesn’t even get the dubious prestige of hitting the cap, yet he did it anyway. I’ll never understand!
14/11/2008 at 20:36 noexes says:
They probably planned this shit and knew what they were doing. Honestly I’m more impressed than anything else.
14/11/2008 at 20:46 Harlequin says:
Jesucristo,
I implore you to go into elaborate detail on how the repetitive nature of MMO’s is different from the repetitve nature of *any* other type of game.
In my blood, I’m an FPS fan above all, but despite the enjoyment I derive from playing shooters, I still consider them to be repetitive.
14/11/2008 at 21:06 A-Scale says:
I just bought 200 worth of Activision/Blizzard stock. For the love of God buy this game and make me some cash!
14/11/2008 at 21:26 Erlam says:
I got to, uh well, 50% through level 70 after two hours? Apparently I suck.
14/11/2008 at 21:52 Iain says:
Now watch for the race to get the first Death Knight to level 80.
@Phemox: It’s not a marketing trick. Blizzard were seriously pissed off about the (also French) guy who got to level 70 twenty-four hours after they released Burning Crusade, and promised that it wouldn’t happen again. They were right, they managed to forestall it for a whole three extra hours!
This was kind of inevitable, really – though this time I’m even more impressed, because the guy who did it in the Burning Crusade had a whole guild backing him up.
14/11/2008 at 21:56 fulis says:
This guy wasn’t first really
Athene was
http://www.worldofathene.com/records.php
14/11/2008 at 22:35 arqueturus says:
@fulis
That’s the most depressing thing I’ve ever watched that’s game related.
14/11/2008 at 22:37 Iain says:
@fulis: I was just reading the background on that. He was using the mob-tagging method that was used when they had the race to level 70 in Burning Crusade. It seems odd that one GM said it was okay and another banned the entire team just before they were about to turn level 80. Sounds a bit like the Blizz GMs being a bit overly officious to me.
14/11/2008 at 23:09 Butler` says:
My DK is 70.
I’m le tired.
14/11/2008 at 23:12 Jesucristo says:
Harlequin, may be adding story, changing world, user content, elaborated quest, “moving” NPC’s, world interactions…?.
If you want FPS not repetitive think about Stalker, Deus Ex, Thief, SWAT 4, System Shock 2…
14/11/2008 at 23:56 Mike says:
People are too down on this, I think. It’s a really impressive achievement, in my opinion. These people are taking gaming further towards a skill than you or I, and while we might not deem it healthy, I can’t say I’m not jealous. I can’t imagine what it’s like be that planned and organised. I’m happy with the hundreds of hours NOT spent in WoW, obviously, but to do something like that… well, it must feel pretty good.
15/11/2008 at 00:00 Radiant says:
Thank god most of that interview is gibberish to me.
What place do you have to be to pay money for an expansion and then run through it like that to get to ‘the end’.
What do people like that do with games that have no end? Create one? Explode? Die alone?
15/11/2008 at 00:02 Radiant says:
And its not ‘a skill’ its a slog, a grind where the only ‘skill’ learnt is time spent.
That’s the nature of mmos they’re not skillful they’re time sinks.
15/11/2008 at 00:16 skalpadda says:
I know you’ve got to be precise for the later raids, but I’d hoped the early 5-man instances would be ameanable to a fairly mongrel group. Not so. It’s not just a matter of getting the right classes, but the right spec of the right classes, and of course players that pretty on the ball.
I felt they were fairly forgiving, although I do all my grouping with guildies who I’ve played with a lot before. They’re perfectly possible to run with a DPS-specced tank or healer at least.
I’d recommend you to find a group for the Azjol’Nerub instance, it felt very different to me, it’s fast with lots of action. For extra comedy value our three damage dealers got locked out from the last boss fight and had to stand behind a gate watching as me (the healer) and the tank very, very slowly beat the last boss. The fact that two level 70 players can handle a level 72-74 5-man boss fight should be some indication of the difficulty. You still need a healer and a tank class for a group of course, and that’s a basic rule that’s so firmly rooted in the collective WoW consciousness that I doubt the developers would dare break it (sadly) ;)
70-80 in 27 hours? I got my tank to 71 and my healer a bit more than half way into 70 in a full day of playing. I did however spend much of the time running around marvelling at the view, giggling at walrus-people and /dancing with the opposite faction.
15/11/2008 at 02:28 Ben Abraham says:
With this wonderful new piece of brilliant writing RPS is now getting Gold Selling ads on the sidebar… maybe you want to block them? I don’t mind, but some people might…
15/11/2008 at 03:37 eyemessiah says:
@Radiant
I suspect a lot of skill comes down to slog really. Thinking about a lot RL endurance feats it seems to me that many of them are grindy and I wouldn’t call the people involved “unskilled”.
I for one am impressed by crazy feats of grinding. Its something I couldn’t do, and I don’t know a lot of gamers with that sort of stamina attention span or commitment.
15/11/2008 at 05:10 Caiman says:
I was going to point out that this is obviously the “WotLK 15 minutes of fame” achievement, but then I spotted the sidebar ad for “Nyhm’s Warcraft Guide” and it’s obviously more than that – it’s a good advertising model too!
15/11/2008 at 06:10 Brian says:
All this guy’s gear is lvl 70. Is it possible to ding 80 with such low gear? Or am I misunderstanding how this WoW Armory site works?
15/11/2008 at 07:27 Mark says:
I’m going to be honest with you, The Internet. This game frightens me.
15/11/2008 at 09:29 thefanciestofpants says:
I respect his fortitude(or budget for energy drinks). But I respect his poor priest’s patience even moar.
He probably paid him real earth dollars to do it however. At least I hope he did.
15/11/2008 at 10:13 Dreamhacker says:
Where WOW goes in, sanity goes out.
15/11/2008 at 11:24 Flint says:
All this guy’s gear is lvl 70. Is it possible to ding 80 with such low gear?
Apparently all the guy did was grind, grind, grind and grind in certain places in the early Northrend zones, so taking that into note, yes it’s possible.
15/11/2008 at 12:27 Pags says:
When I quickly skimmed the frontpage, I thought the title said “Craig Pearson” instead of “Crazy Person”. Which confused me because I always thought he was an ardent WoW-hater.
15/11/2008 at 12:50 Pike says:
All this guy’s gear is lvl 70. Is it possible to ding 80 with such low gear?
He’s in mostly T6+ gear. That gear will be better than pretty much anything in game before level 80 dungeons, unlike how it was when TBC launched.
15/11/2008 at 15:19 The_Pete says:
“If that’s not a poop-socker, I don’t know what is…” – Shawn Elliot
15/11/2008 at 17:20 Gorgeras says:
Developing choreography is a skill.
Following choreography is not, especially the kind which doesn’t require any significant physical or mental conditioning. WoW stopped being about skill when they began gutting it of all ambition in late 2004.
15/11/2008 at 17:41 undead dolphin hacker says:
The best part of the newest keeping up with the Joneses piece of MMORPGs isn’t that some catass will blow past everyone and hit Max Level Whatever in mere hours.
No, the best and most uncanny part is the amazing synthesis of disgust, awe, and jealously that the playerbase expresses.
Also, the dude got 80 in 30 hours most “casuals” will spends anywhere from 4-10x as long doing so… when you take jealousy and epeen envy out of the equation, who’s the bigger catass?
15/11/2008 at 20:18 Rob says:
And now the raid content has been conquered by a guild, seemingly. Interesting reactions coming out of that one.
15/11/2008 at 21:05 Funky Badger says:
A-Scale: I thought you couldn’t afford $20 for a copy of World of Goo… I’m calling shenannigans. ;)
16/11/2008 at 02:37 nutterguy says:
+1 WoW Hater….
change that last letter though and you have the excellent WoG! \o/
16/11/2008 at 09:17 h4plo says:
As a bit of an update, my brother told me that Nihilium and SK Gaming – the TBC-world leaders of content – have apparently cleared ALL PvE content already. Disturbing? Yes – but disturbing to who? Dedicated, hardcore players spending too much time and energy in a game, or disturbing that Blizzard developed content so easily destroyed?
16/11/2008 at 17:19 Dexton says:
I don’t think that it is disturbing that the best, professional (as in, paid money) players can finish the entry level raids quickly.
Especially since the first raid is actually a reboot of a vanilla wow raid which they all knew very well and they had plenty of time in beta to test and thoroughly plan each instance.
Previously Blizzard has been know to make inital raids really hard, including all sorts of bugs and gear checks to slow progression until they are ready with their next patch and their next lot of content. After the pro raiders beat the buggy hard content they would reduce the difficulty so everyone else can beat it too. This time they seem to have put it in at the correct (entry level) difficulty first time, hence the pro guilds shooting through it so fast.
You will hear the pro guilds talk about the original 25 man BC raids and how they contained the hardest encounters they had ever faced in their original conception. While the pro raiders might have loved those inital challenges, the rest of the world certainly did not.
16/11/2008 at 21:53 Chiablo says:
Blizzard just needs to have a service where you pay $50 to start a level 80 character. With all of the bonuses you get to leveling (300% XP boost if you group with a referred character, etc.) this will probably become a reality in the near future.
17/11/2008 at 09:13 Hmm-hmm says:
When I read this one of the reasons I quit the game came back vividly. And I smiled.
It’s a good game, though. Just not for me anymore.
17/11/2008 at 13:06 SPEEDCORE says:
Bah Warlocks! and double bah Alliance!
Wooopie he did it with starting epic gear. I want to see him do it in 24hrs in all greens/blues like 95% of the population of WOW is on then see how long it takes :p
17/11/2008 at 13:59 Shawn says:
I’d Imagine that this is no different then going on a binger for a day or two during the great college years, except, you’re playing WoW and drinking Rockstar or your favorite energy drink…maybe even Dew..
17/11/2008 at 14:59 Michael America says:
Man, talk about blowing through levels like Kleenex!
17/11/2008 at 18:36 danarchist says:
I would like to mock this guy for playing 30 hours straight, really i would. But I remember back in college when I was playing everquest, I blew off my way-too-cute-for-me girlfriend to camp the “Ancient Cyclops” for two days straight with the help of a friend. You pretty much can’t get any nerdier than that!
Although the quests are very much wow style (kill x of x) they seem pretty easy so far. In just a couple hours of play I was over half way through 70 and im full resto shaman.
19/11/2008 at 17:39 Quinnbeast says:
Did someone use the word “skill”?
Leveling a Wow toon to 80 in 30 hours straight: put that on your CV folks!