How fast can you go from 0 to 60?

by James Egan Sep 1st 2008 at 7:00PM

Filed under: World of Warcraft, Fantasy, Video, Game mechanics, MMO industry, Leveling, Tips and tricks, News items

How fast can you go from zero to 60? The question sounds like it's right out of a Ferrari brochure, but we assure you, we're talking about World of Warcraft. The most recent promotion Blizzard's come out with, Recruit-a-Friend, allows for a steep increase in experience gains. We said there would be 'hyper-fast leveling' but this is absolutely insane -- our sister site WoW Insider has a video of one of their readers (Brian) leveling a paladin from character creation to level 60 in just 20 minutes.

Brian needed the grantable levels from a recruited account of course, so the real 'work' was done beforehand, but this is still quite a sight. Check out the video below the cut for some ding madness.

One of Azeroth's millions of citizens? Check out our ongoing coverage of the World of Warcraft, and be sure to touch base with our sister site WoW Insider for all your Lich King needs!

Have you taken advantage of Blizzard's Recruit-a-Friend promotion? If not, how do you feel about it, considering all those hours you spent leveling up your characters before this promotion went into effect?

One of Azeroth's millions of citizens? Check out our ongoing coverage of the World of Warcraft, and be sure to touch base with our sister site WoW Insider for all your Lich King needs!

Tags: blizzard, ding, fantasy, game-mechanics, leveling, mmo-industry, opinion, paladin, promotion, recruit-a-friend, tips-and-tricks, video, world-of-warcraft, wow, wow-insider

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Kyoji said on 7:36PM 9-01-2008

Having spent a while levling my own charatcers, this doesnt bothe rme at all. Some one had to gain 120 levels for him to get these 60, whether it was him on trial account sor friends, the fact remains that's still a lot of work.

some one said on 7:39PM 9-01-2008

seriously? I feel like I wasted so much time now. Im pissed!

Kyoji said on 8:01PM 9-01-2008

Well, you still have to jump through a lot of hoops, and the recruit a friend program is limited to 5 friends and 90 days each for the triple xp. Add to that the fact that trial accounts are capped at 20, I dont really see this as a slap to the face. Now if Blizzard went and increased xp gain by 3x overall, at least from 1 to 60, then yea, I'd feel cheated a little bit.

ScytheNoire said on 8:04PM 9-01-2008

Blizzard has really "jumped the shark" with this offer. They are obviously worried about Warhammer Online and getting desperate.

Demosthenes said on 10:29PM 9-01-2008

No Scythe, they're not. Its mostly geared to allow new players that are just starting the chance to catch up to lvl 68 and current players before Wrath hits.

MrGutts said on 6:51AM 9-02-2008

How fast can someone swipe a credit card for a little Chinese man to do it? Half a second maybe?

I win.. :P

John said on 6:52AM 9-02-2008

How fast can someone swipe a credit card for a little Chinese man to do it? Half a second maybe?

I win.. :P

MrGutts said on 6:54AM 9-02-2008

Well that is a little weird. It doubled posted with my main account and a new reader one.

Oh well, lets thank the fantastic AOL programming for that one.

Juha.. said on 11:36AM 9-02-2008

Sounds like clutching at straws for me. They are pretty much taking another deadly shot to their 1-60 content.. :p

They dont need to do it, so this is pretty confusing,.

torak said on 9:39AM 9-02-2008

How fast can one go from 1-60 with this? About as fast as a dev can say "hey we have reduced our 1-60 game experience to a cheap marketing ploy, it isn't worth your time anyway so get a friend to play and skip it!"

Honestly, this is what our genre of virtual worlds has been reduced to...marketing gimicks to bypass the game itself. What kind of message is that? You may as well bot as the devs seem to feel its not worth doing anyway, thats what.

Roland said on 12:29PM 9-02-2008

The thing you have to way here is how they can keep the game alive. Yes, games like Warhammer are taking some of their players away but that is not the whole problem. They have to have the ability to keep new players coming to their game and thus they need incentives in order for the new players to feel like they are going to play the new content this year. Otherwise, the new players will feel like they are in a grind scale that is pointless. Part of this comes from the fact that there is no one in the old world, minus capital cities, I have played mid level content both pre and post BC. There were a lot of people running around leveling (no duh) in pre-BC but now no one. All Blizzard is doing is trying to do is gain the few players they can squeeze out that do not have seventies while making it easy for those that do to make alts.

recursive said on 2:27PM 9-02-2008

Hmm. Levels is one of the things I really don't see as something I "earned" nor as something I should be envious of. I thought it was about having fun in the game?

Playing MMOs with friends is great and while you wouldn't have seen this particular move coming back at the WoW launch when there only were these 60 levels, this is really just another take on sidekicking etc and I have no problem getting behind this feature at this point in the game. The gap between 0 and cap is only going to grow, which won't exactly increase it's appeal to new players.

You don't have to spend weeks/months as a beginner plodding along by yourself to catch up with your friends, you can experience upcoming new content together and the content is always there if you want to go back. What's not to like?