Monkeylool is the first WoW player to reach level 60 in Shadowlands

Monkeylool from the World of Warcraft guild OTK on Al’akir EU became the first player to hit level 60 last night following the launch of the new Shadowlands expansion—and he did it in just over three hours.

The WoW player took an unconventional approach with his group to speedrun the latest expansion, using lower-leveled characters to queue up for a specific dungeon: Necrotic Wake.

The dungeon, which grants a lot of experience, is limited to characters between levels 50 and 56. The group used alts to help Monkeylool level up by being the party leader and queueing up for the dungeon, circumventing the level requirement.

But one key aspect of this tactic is that Monkeylool didn’t zone into the dungeon until it was almost completed to benefit from the dungeon completion experience from the Dungeon Finder tool. This bonus experience, combined with the experience from completing the campaign, allowed him and his group to be the first to hit level 60 in Shadowlands.

Alongside Monkeylool’s group, another group of WoW players used this tactic as well. The group composed of Mythic raiders used the same tactic to great success, but they hit level 60 roughly 20 minutes after Monkeylool.

Monkeylool isn’t the first level 60 player in WoW’s history, however, since that mark has been attained by players from the Vanilla and Classic versions of the game. The first level 60 player was Xenif, a troll Rogue who got to level 60 on Dec. 3, 2004 in the Vanilla version of WoW. After him, Jokerd reached level 60 on Aug. 30, 2020 in the Classic version of WoW.