How the world’s first WoW Classic Lvl 60 Jokerd leveled up so fast

World of Warcraft Classic streamer ‘JokerdTV’ was fired into the spotlight in the past few days after becoming the first grinder to reach level 60, but the Gnome Mage player’s achievement may have been soured for some due to his use of a new Classic mechanic.

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The massively popular online RPG WoW has seen a resurgence over the last week since the release of Classic, and gamers all across the internet have been keeping a close eye on major milestones for the title, from the first level 60 to the World’s First raid finish.

Small-time Twitch streamer Jokerd made history as he hit the max level-cap less than a week after release, playing nearly non-stop to make his target. There are some that believe his use of ‘layering’ should invalidate his success, however, after he used it to earn his final two levels.

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Layering is a modern feature added to WoW Classic by the developers to help spread players out across instances. The newly added mechanic is designed to keep server populations at a manageable level and would mean there wouldn’t be crashes due to floods of players.

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Jokerd realized he could save time on monster respawns by utilizing the instance feature, and once he hit level 58 he began jumping between different versions of the same area on his Mograine EU server to grab more experience in less time.

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Jokerd, who has been fully embracing his explosive fame with things like a face reveal this week, created a Twitter account to respond to recent accusations and attempted to explain his use of the layering feature.

“About the layering abuse accusations: I started using layering to my leveling advantage at level 58, at this point, it was in the bad (sic) that I was first 60, and I wanted to save 1-1.5 hours,” the WoW sensation explained. “Feel free to check my vods, I streamed all of it.”

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The use of layering instances isn’t necessarily a cheat or work-around for leveling, however. Blizzard has been well aware of the potential of the Classic mechanic since release, and has even given interviews explaining how the instance-based feature would work.

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The potential abuse of the layering feature from level 58 to 60 isn’t the only complaint that has arisen either. Esports organization Method also accused the WoW Classic star of account sharing, though this was later revealed to be based on a joke from Jokerd about his brother helping him play.

(Timestamp of 1:10 for mobile viewers.)

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Despite these accusations, there can be no doubting that Jokerd has made WoW Classic history. There will always be those that question high-level achievements in games, but it’s clear Jokerd has put in the time and effort to claim the mantle of fastest to level 60.

Jokerd is also currently riding the high of WoW Classic’s massive popularity boom. The game has been beating out Fortnite on Twitch since it’s release, and currently has 141k viewers at the time of this posting. Fortnite sits behind with 119k, while League of Legends is trailing with 107k.