World of Warcraft: Forever already has its first level 60 characters—and they reached the cap so quickly that the game’s endgame is still weeks from being ready for them. Team JokerD completed the race less than three days after the MMO launched on November 4, turning a game built around slow exploration into an unexpectedly intense speedrunning spectacle. The first level 60 race in WoW Forever was won by a group composed almost entirely of Undead characters, with one Troll rounding out the team.
The choice of race was more than cosmetic. Blizzard reworked the Undead racial ability Cannibalize so it can help restore mana as well as sustain the group between pulls. That allowed the team to gather large packs of enemies, burn them down with area-of-effect attacks, and keep moving with far less downtime than conventional questing would require. The result was a leveling strategy that looked less like a leisurely tour through Azeroth and more like a coordinated raid encounter repeated across the open world.
JokerD was already a familiar name in World of Warcraft leveling races. The streamer also claimed the world-first level 60 when WoW Classic launched in 2019, making the team’s performance in Forever a continuation of an established competitive tradition. Other players were still racing behind them, but the gap was substantial: the leading character outside Team JokerD was reported to be Ksuper Worldfirst at level 53 while JokerD’s group had already reached the cap.
For most players, however, hitting 60 now does not mean immediately stepping into the full endgame. Blizzard’s official launch announcement confirms that World of Warcraft: Forever is designed around a permanent, journey-focused version of Azeroth, with a Legacy System that encourages players to develop multiple characters, classes, and professions. That makes alternate characters a central part of the progression plan rather than merely something for completionists to tackle after exhausting a main.
The timing also gives the wider player base room to catch up. Barrow Deeps, Hyjal Summit, and Onyxia’s Lair are all scheduled to open on December 9, giving level 60 players more than a month to build groups, finish preparations, and explore the game’s other content. Blizzard’s raid overview lists Barrow Deeps as a 10-player raid, Hyjal Summit as a 20-player encounter, and Onyxia’s Lair as a 40-player challenge. Until then, Team JokerD’s likely next move is to gear up, experiment with another character, or simply find new ways to optimize a game that is explicitly asking players not to rush.
The launch itself appears to have held up unusually well under the initial surge. Blizzard said the game was running across 3,924 virtual machines with 251,136 GB of memory and 70,480 CPU cores—roughly 251 terabytes of RAM dedicated to keeping Forever online. That considerable infrastructure investment helped produce a remarkably stable opening, but the more interesting test may come later: whether a game built to make leveling the destination can keep its fastest players engaged while the rest of Azeroth takes the long road to 60.
