Exciting times in World of Warcraft Classic, folks. One determined MMO devotee imitating anime hero One-Punch Man has now spent 292 hours punching things to death as a naked hardcore WoW Classic Warrior, determined to reach level 60 with the only weapons that matter: their first, and their other fist.
Reddit user Historical-Warning88, or Onepunchwarr in-game, has been at this for about seven months. Terrifyingly, their detailed Reddit post and YouTube playlist history back up their claims with receipt upon receipt. "I'm doing solo questing, no grouping," they asserted in a previous post. "No armor no weapon only fists and punches," another post reads, swiftly adding, "'What am I doing with my life?'"
I was originally going to write this article on July 25, and I now consider its delay to be divine providence. Just yesterday, July 27, the One Punch Warrior posted a new update: they're 292 hours in, they're level 55, and the grind is really starting to affect them.
"I'm still alive. And not so healthy anymore. But at least I'm level 50 now," they say in their latest video. Perhaps this series will go down as its own historical warning.
"After 69 hours of mob grinding without any gear and no weapon, I managed to go from level 50 to level 55 in 5 weeks," their latest Reddit update begins. "By now, the grind has become a bit too insane, I'm leveling all the time with rested XP buff and it still takes me at least 12 hours of mob grinding until I get to the next level. I need over 170k total experience to reach a new level, and killing a mob gives me 240-280xp per kill."
That is, One Punch Warrior correctly observed, "a lot of NPC I have to kill." That said, at this point it seems the grinding isn't the hard part, but rather "dealing with my anxiety that I could be killed by [a] random disconnection in combat." Lag and disconnects are too often the killers of even the best-played hardcore MMO accounts – dying to an actual in-game threat or mistake is a true warrior's death – and that fear looms over One Punch Warrior like a storm cloud.
"My most recent [disconnect] was at level 51 to a power outage," they say, worrying that "'I'm pushing my luck too far already.' But overall everything else looks great, I got my Max ranks of Demoralizing and Battle Shout, Recklessness allows me to solo some Rare and hard mobs and I stocked up on tons of consumables to use to reach level 60. The only thing left to do is to grind for another 90 hours to hit level 60 – or I get killed by DC or a random Elite mob kills me in Un'Goro Crate." (Respectively, those abilities debuff enemy damage, increase friendly attack power, and increase Warrior Rage generation and critical strike chance.)
I'll tell you what they aren't afraid of: death flags. In last month's update, the One Punch Warrior wrote: "Just imagine losing 7 months of my progress, dying from a random power outage while my warrior was in-combat. How painful this will be :3 So yes, I'm now making my final push to reach level 60. I hope it's going to be fun. And watch me suffering."
Just imagine!
"If you die now, that just might become the saddest RIP in the history of hardcore WoW," one onlooker says in the replies.
"This is a reminder to check on your loved ones," another player says in a separate post.
We're all rooting for you, One Punch Warrior. And also hoping you get some rest.
