Last week, Blizzard launched War Within, the latest World of Warcraft expansion. And for those of you wondering if that one player who never left the starting area of Mists of Pandaria aka the Panda expansion is still neutrally grinding away and hitting the max level in 2024 the answer is: Yes. Yes indeed.
Some background. When World of Warcraft’s Mists of Pandaria expansion launched in 2012, player NeutralAgent decided to never leave the starting area of the game. Instead, they hit the max level without venturing out into the wider world of Blizzard’s popular MMO. This wasn’t easy, as there aren’t many quests to complete in the starting zone. So eventually, they had to grind XP by picking herbs and mining. This took about two years, but eventually, they hit the max level in Mists of Pandaria’s starting zone, which means they never had to pick a side in WoW war between the Horde and the Alliance.
For the last decade, NeutralAgent has continued to stay in the starting zone, remaining neutral, and picking a ton of plants to slowly reach the max level in each and every future expansion, including the recently released War Within.
As reported by Icy Veins, on September 2 NeutralAgent hit the max level in War Within while still hanging out in the Mists of Pandaria starting zone. This time it took him 10 days and 10 hours of grinding away to reach level 80.
You can watch NeutralAgent go from level 79 to 80 in the video below. Just a heads up: That final level took over two hours to grind out.
Now, technically, NeutralAgent isn’t the first player to reach level 80 as a neutral panda in War Within. Another player used a different, wild method involving thousands of in-game cards and multiple characters to reach the maximum level in just 17 and a half hours.
And that’s neat and all, I guess, and it’s not cheating, but it doesn’t feel like the same thing as NeutralAgent’s grind. NeutralAgent’s method is more pure and time-consuming and I respect it more.
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