MMO Culture has spotted the first level 80 character in Guild Wars 2. According to the report, a player named "Surfeuze" hit the level cap through crafting only. Materials were supplied by guild mates. It never takes long, does it?

Read the full report at MMO Culture.

UPDATE: ArenaNet's Mike O'Brien has posted a shout out and an apology to Surfeuze on Reddit as "the first legitimate level 80" character:

Surfeuze played normal PvE content to level 60, although obviously racing past everything he could, and then leveled from 60 to 80 through crafting. His secret weapon was his strong team supplying him with crafting materials. That allowed him to jump ahead of everyone else in those last 20 levels.

Really is quite sad IMO but as long as they had fun congrats to them for their accomplishment!

Congrats to them and all. But really, no game should ever be designed that allows, by any means, people to level that fast.

What 43 hours in and L80, umm woohoo? And for their next trick?

Still remembering the EQ1 devs stating that no character could hit L50 in less than a year of gameplay, 3 months later they were having to eat a lot of crow.

13 years later and Devs still have no clue of what players can and will do...

There really isn't anything wrong with being able to level this quickly - if you make it harder to level, then you put your "one year to level 80" crew into the "ten years to level 80" crew, and put your "two days to level 80" crew into the "two weeks to level 80" crew. That's a lot of damage to the game just to try and control a minority group of players from leveling too quickly.

It's an error to design the game for the speed runners.  They are going to do that regardless, in whatever time frame they can.  Aim for the more reasonable center.

As long as the speed runners are having fun and not complaining about lack of content, no big problem.

Originally posted by Denambren

There really isn't anything wrong with being able to level this quickly - if you make it harder to level, then you put your "one year to level 80" crew into the "ten years to level 80" crew, and put your "two days to level 80" crew into the "two weeks to level 80" crew. That's a lot of damage to the game just to try and control a minority group of players from leveling too quickly.

Exactly, the extreme levelers will never be satisfied in a themepark game.

A little slow there Suzie_Ford seeing that was already spotted by others in the guild wars forum :P

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/362528/First-lvl-80.html

Honestly, why even put levels in mmo's anymore.

so in reality . it took a a whole guild (of 50 members first guild cap ) to level one character to lvl 80. ats how i see it.

<.<

end of story.

or simply he could of just gone into world pvp -and BAM! instant 80!....

these guys are silly.

level cap  dosent mean anything in this game, its explorations, personal story, and pvp!now caping your craftsmanship- well then congrats to that!v- nice to see theer is no first world names in GW2!- only mmorpg shout outs

And some different person will chase the spotlight when an expansion increases the level cap to 85 or 90 or 100.  Someone who may take months to get to 80.

AN knew exactly how much XP someone could generate with all-out crafting, and didn't care to slow it down.  It doesn't bother me at all - why waste time trying to design gates, when it's futile in the end?  I'd rather see them design so it doesn't confer a major advantage to be at max level early, and I hope AN has pulled it off. 

That's what soured me on Tera so quickly, you can easily get left behind on the progression trail at max level, and there's a true boost to doin' it firstest.  I'd like GW2 not to go down that road.

Is there a non-crafter at L80 yet?  If not, then that shows you something.

Some of you are not thnking about how much easier it could potentially be to level up as a crafter in a game.  As mentioned, their entire guild was supplying materials for crafting.  If this is the case, this player probably didn't ever have to move.  They probably just sat there, crafting in one spot, while guildmates continues to pour in periodically with a stack of materials.  Where as leveling by other means, there is most definitely some down time.  Whether it be resting, in load screens, travelling, looting enemies that were killed and so on.  The crafter likely just has to press the same buttons over and over again without stopping.

It would kind of be like your guildmates aggroing mobs to your location and letting you kill them and take all the credit.  Or turning in quests without actually having to travel anywhere to do it.  I'm not really surprised.  It had to happen at some point.

game normally at times as well, hence his 80 levels were not solely from crafting.

hmmm-shame mmorpg.

<.<