Update November 24, 2016: He’s only bloody done it. Doubleagent, the notorious Pandaran Shaman has made it all the way to level 110 without ever leaving the starting area.
Giving up on the rest of Blizzard’s MMO, Doubleagent banished himself to the starting area by refusing to choose a faction, in a bid to hit max level with the tools available there: mining ore and picking flowers. It’s slow and steady work, but he finally made it. How did he celebrate this momentous occasion? Well, he went and mined some more ore, obviously. It’s the only thing he knows how to do now, I think. He’s more ore than man these days.
For what’s coming next if you’ve somehow already made it to 110, check our round-up of World of Warcraft patch 7.1.5.
You can see the moment it happened, too, as he shared the video to YouTube. It’s his complete lack of reaction and almost immediate search for more ore that gets me. Have a watch:
Now, after two months of solid levelling from 100 to 110, he can finally, you know, play the rest of the game.
Original Story September 15, 2016: The tale of Doubleagent the Pandaran Shaman is one of commitment, zen, no small amount of pointlessness and legend. A player on the Mannoroth-US realm levelled a character to max without ever choosing a faction, generally the final part of the starting experience for the Pandaran race that then shoves them out into the wider world. While enemies and quests have long since dried up, he can continue to level through gathering professions. Each deposit of copper mined or flower picked gives a (very) small amount of XP, slowly pushing Doubleagent up to max – and now he’s started his journey to 110.
You can track Doubleagent’s progress on the WoW Armoury, which recently started working properly again after Blizzard took many of its features offline to help launch Legion. He’s kitted out in experience-increasing gear to ease the pain and which gives him a slightly dopey look.
It’s going to take a long, long time, even with those. Posts on Reddit indicate that he’ll require more than 600,000xp just to go from 109 to 110, and he’s got to make it there first. They come at about 90xp a pop, let’s call it 15-20 seconds per node – that’s more than a day of play for that level alone. But, if there’s one thing Doubleagent has taught us, it’s that he’ll put the time in.
He’s even been rewarded with his own in-game homage. In the Monk class order hall added in Legion, which utilises the same space that Doubleagent has been grinding all these years, there’s an NPC named Venerable Shaman, kitted out in the same gear, that will endlessly run between giant, custom copper mining nodes. Keep going, little dude. You’ll make it.