The first to level 80 is Nymh

That screenshot also seems to be from the Grizzly Hills, which is roughly a mid-70s zone. Nymh may have dinged 80, but she still has plenty of content ahead. I hope the trek to 80 was an enjoyable one! How long until you start leveling your alts, Nymh?
Reports of the first character to reach level 80 are flooding in, and there are screenshots to back it up. Congratulations to Nymh of EU Drek'thar on your achievement! Nymh's Armory displays her (him?) as an SL/SL Warlock, which I've been told is an exceptionally good grinding spec, especially when coupled with a healer.
Judging by her buffs in the full screenshot, it looks like she just may have had a pocket healer on the journey to 80. A Discipline Priest, specifically. Whether the Priest was there the whole way through or just happened to be partied with Nymh at that moment, we're not really sure.
Journalist:Hello Nymh, and congratulations for your level 80 ! Could you tell us a bit more about yourself ?
Nymh: I play a warlock named Nymh on the french server Drek'thar. I used to be the guild leader of Harmonie, a french top PvE guild who was among the first to kill Kil'jaeden, but we eventually decided to merge with the 2nd guild of our server. The result is Genesis, which was originally an pre-BC high level guild. In real life I'm 21 and currently employed, I took a few days of vacation for the release of the expansion.
Journalist: The first level 80 was supposed to be Darus, a paladin who did some powerleveling in instances with Athene and a few other people and eventually got suspended by Blizzard at level 79. (and reseted to level 70 a few hours later) Did you hear about him ?

Nymh: Yeah I had a few people monitoring other servers to give me updates about the situation here, I don't really know how Darus did that but I assume it will be hotfixed by Blizzard very soon.
Journalist: Is there anyone you want to thank ?

Nymh: Sure ! There are a bunch of people who helped a lot with my leveling.
Pavelomm was nice enough to stay with me for the last 27 hours and managed to keep me alive for all this time!

Pratax originally planned to level with me but couldn't be here due to last minute work obligations, he helped me a lot during beta when I was planning everything.

Ardanell / Bro / Zhazha were nice enough to run all the way to Grizzly Hills to teleport me to Ironforge and let me train my new spells without wasting too much time.

Coralie, who was nice enough to buy me the game 2 days ago!
Journalist: You reached the max level 27 hours after the european servers went online, that's pretty fast even if you spend all your time leveling ...Could you tell us how you achieved that ?

Nymh: The idea first came up when I saw this post from Jynxx. The idea looked nice and I decided to run a few tests on beta servers. It took about 3 hours to level from 78 to 79 and considering that it was one of the longest level, it seemed good enough to use this strategy to powerlevel at the release.
The biggest problem was to find a spot with enough monsters to grind without too much downtime ...I spent some time on beta servers and eventually found the crypt in Drakil'ji Ruins (Grizzly Hills), I think that's one of the only place in Wrath of the Lich King where monsters repop in about 30 seconds, mobs here are also neutral and it makes grinding a little safer.

I also had to optimize my downtimes and decided to level with a healer out of party, Pavelomm was nice enough to spend the last 27 hours healing me without taking any XP and he obviously played a huge role in the process.
When I reached level 76 I realized that my leveling speed was slightly lower than what I experienced in beta, I decided to change the template from the original post and switched to something with 2 points in Shadow Mastery to make my DoTs stronger and the leveling a bit easier. (It usually takes 2 DoTs to kill a monster)

Tags: level 80, Nymh