World First LVL 80 Explained - Interview with Nymh
We had a few words with Nymh, the first player in the world to reach level 80 in Wrath of the Lich King.


MMO-Champion: Hello Nymh, and congratulations for your level 80 ! Could you tell us a bit more about yourself ?
Nymh: I play a warlock named Nymh on the french server Drek'thar. I used to be the guild leader of Harmonie, a french top PvE guild who was among the first 10 guilds to kill Kil'jaeden in France, but we eventually decided to merge with the 2nd guild of our server. The result is Genesis, which was originally an pre-BC high level guild. In real life I'm 21 and currently employed, I took a few days of vacation for the release of the expansion.

MMO-Champion: You reached the max level 27 hours after the european servers went online, that's pretty fast even if you spend all your time leveling ... Could you tell us how you achieved that ?
Nymh: The idea first came up when I saw this post from Jynxx. The idea looked nice and I decided to run a few tests on beta servers. It took about 3 hours to level from 78 to 79 and considering that it was one of the longest level, it seemed good enough to use this strategy to powerlevel at the release.

The biggest problem was to find a spot with enough monsters to grind without too much downtime ... I spent some time on beta servers and eventually found the crypt in Drakil'ji Ruins (Grizzly Hills), I think that's one of the only place in Wrath of the Lich King where monsters repop in about 30 seconds, mobs here are also neutral and it makes grinding a little safer.


I also had to optimize my downtimes and decided to level with a healer out of party, Pavelomm was nice enough to spend the last 27 hours healing me without taking any XP and he obviously played a huge role in the process.

When I reached level 76 I realized that my leveling speed was slightly lower than what I experienced in beta, I decided to change the template from the original post and switched to something with 2 points in Shadow Mastery to make my DoTs stronger and the leveling a bit easier. (It usually takes 2 DoTs to kill a monster)

MMO-Champion: The first level 80 was supposed to be Darus, a paladin who did some powerleveling in instances with Athene and a few other people and eventually got suspended by Blizzard at level 79. (and reseted to level 70 a few hours later) Did you hear about him ?
Nymh: Yeah I had a few people monitoring other servers to give me updates about the situation here, I don't really know how Darus did that but I assume it will be hotfixed by Blizzard very soon.

MMO-Champion: Is there anyone you want to thank ?
Nymh: Sure ! There are a bunch of people who helped a lot with my leveling.

• Pavelomm was nice enough to stay with me for the last 27 hours and managed to keep me alive for all this time!
• Pratax originally planned to level with me but couldn't be here due to last minute work obligations, he helped me a lot during beta when I was planning everything.
• Ardanell / Bro / Zhazha were nice enough to run all the way to Grizzly Hills to teleport me to Ironforge and let me train my new spells without wasting too much time.
• Coralie, who was nice enough to buy me the game 2 days ago!

And of course, the whole Genesis guild and all the players from Drek'thar-EU!

79

Darus = Athene team.

That was even faster than I expected.  I should have read the warlock forum, I guess.

They went in to 5-mans, darus tagged all the mobs, then the 5 man finished them off. A GM previously told them it was a "clever use of the game mechanics" or something to that effect. Then when they actually used it, they got banned. That's the story, at least.

http://www.worldofathene.com/records.php

kinda a lame reason to be banned for.  hasn't blizz known about that problem for a long time.. and fixed it.

owell.. start over!

gj lock!

Well, wasn't he a clever lad (or lass, if Nymh is female).

He deserves to be the world first with the effort he put in, first in beta and then on his live server. Kudos to his mate for assisting for 27 hours straight with no benefit of his own. That's real camaraderie.

Gaiwyn

Well, actually, there is no excuse for the GM being as silly. Most players knew or ad least predicted that this was or would be a bannable offense, and that it was an exploit in the way tagging mobs works. Athene and his folks knew this for pretty damn sure, and went to find some GM who didn't - otherwise, why would they have asked in the first place.

As shallow an achievement as this is anyway, the way Nymnh did it seems a lot more straightforward to me, even with the out-of-party healer. He at least went and did some back-breaking 27-hours of grinding shit to death. I rather support that than the people arround Athene...