World of Warcraft players hit level 100 hours after Warlords of Draenor launches

World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor

World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor didn't have the smoothest launch ever, thanks in part to digital riff-raff who launched a distributed denial of service, (DDoS, to its friends), attack against the game, driving up latency and making it difficult for players to connect. But in spite of the problems, it's taken mere hours for players to start hitting the new level cap.

The Warlords of Draenor expansion launched yesterday, November 13, and by later the same day, Eurogamer reported that 24 people on the European server Bloodscalp were listed as being at level 100, the new level cap established by the expansion. Prior to the release of Draenor, the maximum World of Warcraft character level was 90.

Some users were reportedly taking advantage of exploits to hit the cap in just an hour, while others had practiced leveling routes during the beta and were able to power to the top despite the launch troubles, which Blizzard confirmed were caused by a combination of the overwhelming number of players and the intentional efforts of troublemakers.

Blizzard has since sounded the all-clear, although there may still be a few bumps in the road. "Realms are once again available, however we do expect that during the initial rush to log in there will be a period of delays and potential errors," an update posted at 11:50 am PST states. "We expect these to resolve within 30 minutes or so as players successfully log in, and strain on the authentication and login servers subsides."

As for the most important question—Is it any good?—our man on the ground is taking a little more time with it than the aforementioned 24, but you can read what we've got so far in our World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor review in progress.

Andy Chalk

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.