A 9-hour power-leveling run at 1.8 million XP/hour due to a bugged boss encounter.
Players understandably expect a World of Warcraft experience that is exactly like the MMO experience they remember from years ago when the game’s long-requested “Classic” servers finally launch. This week, at least one player took that idea too far by utilising outdated exploits to quickly hit the level 80 maximum on Blizzard’s Wrath of the Lich King Classic (also known as Wrath Classic) servers just hours after they went live.
The level 80 speedrun accomplishment was reported on Twitter early on Tuesday morning by streamer Naowh and his Echo Guild comrades. The quick levelling makes use of a faulty Icecrown boss that consistently generates mobs of zombie undead, as Naowh explains in an accompanying video. When the next mob pops in, the player can “tag” those zombies with a single attack and then gain full experience for eliminating every zombie.
Before the Wrath Classic servers went live on Monday, according to Naowh, he practised this technique in the live retail edition of World of Warcraft. Retail is still the same today, according to Naowh. I’m shocked no one has called attention to this.
This exploit was paired by Naowh with another that makes advantage of four of his group’s level 1-dead characters. All of the group experience gained from the battle goes to Naowh because these low-level players are unable to gain experience from the high-level mob. Using all of these tricks, Naowh was able to level up from level 71 to 80 in less than nine hours, gaining experience at the incredible rate of 1.8 million XP each hour.
The more changes there are,
The exploit-driven level 80 push by Naowh reminds one of similar strategies employed for the 2008 release of Wrath of the Lich King. Athene, a well-known player at the time, was removed from the game after a 13-hour marathon play session following the game’s introduction saw her reach level 79.
While Athene’s technique wasn’t exactly the same as Naowh’s, it did make use of a glitch that allowed players to receive full “solo” experience points for mobs that were actually destroyed by a large, powerful group. The usage of the mob-tagging technique, according to Athene, “was certified by Blizzard GM Aegeoth to be entirely allowed in the game,” making it clear that it was not a problem.
A few hours after Athene was suspended, a player by the name of Nymh became the first authenticated player to reach level 80, an accomplishment we covered at the time on Ars Technica. The validity of Athene’s ban and the extent to which mob-tagging abuse qualified as exploit abuse were the subjects of extensive community debate as a result.
For its part, Blizzard appears to have recently put in place a “stopgap remedy” to stop mob-tagging a la Athene in Wrath Classic. Naowh accepted the prospect that Blizzard would cancel his own record and reset his character in order to prevent him from exploiting other exploits to power-level, perhaps acknowledging this history a little.
People are engaging in “all kinds of insane mob-tagging… and things,” according to Naowh. “I won’t be upset if they want to use me as an example by demoting me for doing anything shady. It certainly pushes the envelope. I’ll accept Blizzard if it feels like too much. They are in charge.”
Naowh, however, may currently take great pride in becoming the first level 80 character on the Wrath Classic servers at a time when a huge number of other players are still patiently waiting in lines to log in. Naowh claims that if the achievement reset occurs, he will simply consider it another achievement. Imagine if we also experienced the first level 80 rollback, he remarked. Then we would achieve two world firsts in a single day!
