WoW player wins race to new Wrath Classic level cap using decade-old bug

A World of Warcraft player has hit the highest level possible in Wrath of the Lich King Classic in a matter of hours, despite the servers launching to lengthy queues. 

Echo Guild’s Naowh won the race to level 80 on the new servers by using a 12-year-old bug that looks just as classic as the servers themselves, allowing the World of Warcraft fan to accomplish the feat in roughly nine hours. In short, Naowh benefited from the presence of an Elite monster that constantly spawns zombies until you take them down. Tag those zombies before a new wave is summoned, and they'll despawn, but still grant you the XP you would have received for killing them.

To help accelerate their plan further, Naowh also partied up with a bunch of players using level one accounts. When they inevitably succumbed to the wave of undead, Naowh gained extra group XP, speeding up their progression to level 80 even more.

This exploit has been around since the original Wrath of the Lich King launch. As such, a few of Naowh’s viewers asked if he thought Blizzard might revoke his achievement by rolling his account back to level 70 due to the glitch, though he appears pretty laid back by the whole thing. For Naowh, he’s either the first person to hit level 80 or the first person to hit level and then subsequently be punished. 

Here’s the moment Naowh’s accomplished the feat. 

While the Classic Wrath of the Lich King servers have just launched, they’re looking mighty popular if social media is anything to go by. Reddit and Twitter are filled with oodles of shots of queue lengths. Heck, even Naowh had his fair share of issues. Still, that hasn’t dampened the excitement around seeing the boat arrive to usher them off to Darkshore. 

More? World of Warcraft: Dragonflight launches this year, Blizzard says.