A French player in the War Legend guild has reached level 80 after just 32 hours of playing Guild Wars 2, before the game’s official launch, which would be today. That’s not only a pretty impressive feat, but almost an unbelievable one. And one that Mike O’Brien, President and Co-Founder of ArenaNet, found a little hard to parse for a moment, thinking that it might have been all part of an exploit.
However, after some clarification over at MMO Culture, it’s become clear that Surfeuze, the level 80 player, didn’t have exploits on his side so much as a selfless guild happy to pump crafting materials his way so that he could blitz from level 60-80 just through making things. Which, in a way, is even more insane. Getting to max level first in any MMO is always a feat that’s going to be renowned, and all this press is probably going to do War Legend a whole bunch of good, so throwing all of those materials Surfeuze’s way probably will help them in the long run.
Mike O’Brien’s comment is below, and now you can all look at your mid-twenty level character and sigh, before heading back into what’s looking more and more like the best MMO we’ve had in a long time.
As you may have read, Surfeuze was the first character to reach level 80, racing there in only 32 hours during the headstart period.
I’d like to apologize for writing an earlier comment that cast doubt on his accomplishment. At the same time Surfeuze was racing to level 80, we were tracking and talking with other players who were racing toward 80 as well, using a technique that really shouldn’t be that lucrative and that we’re making changes to fix. We believed one of those players would be first to 80, and when Surfeuze posted of his accomplishment, I mistakenly thought he was a player who had used that technique.
In fact he wasn’t. Surfeuze played normal PvE content to level 60, although obviously racing past everything he could, and then leveled from 60 to 80 through crafting. His secret weapon was his strong team supplying him with crafting materials. That allowed him to jump ahead of everyone else in those last 20 levels.
So congratulations to Surfeuze, legitimately the first player to reach level 80.~ MO