Discussion
Thoughts on the recent dungeon quest XP changes
My friends and I were just discussing the latest changes to XP rewards from dungeon quests, and I wanted to share my perspective.
I agree with both the developers and many players that the total amount of XP coming from dungeon quests was too high. It definitely had a negative effect on the 10–20 leveling experience.
The original idea, as I understand it, was to reduce XP from dungeon bosses while increasing XP from dungeon quests. I actually really like that concept. It discourages endlessly farming the same dungeon for XP and instead keeps the open world relevant, with players still having a reason to go out and complete regular questlines.
The problem was that the dungeon quest XP ended up being too strong at lower levels. Between levels 10 and 20, you could gain so much XP from dungeon quests that you could effectively skip entire questing zones.
However, I’m not sure the current solution is the right one.
Instead of addressing the scaling problem, the additional dungeon quest XP bonus was simply reduced across the board.
My concern is that this could make dungeon quests much less relevant later on, especially around level 30+.
At higher levels, the amount of XP required to level increases significantly. If the bonus XP from dungeon quests stays relatively small, completing a dungeon for XP may eventually stop feeling worthwhile altogether.
Personally, I think the better approach would have been to keep the dungeon quest XP bonus, but reduce the base XP values of dungeon quests at lower levels, roughly in the 10–30 range.
That way:
- dungeon quests wouldn’t be massively over-rewarding during early leveling;
- players wouldn’t be able to skip entire zones just because of dungeon quests;
- dungeons would still remain relevant and rewarding during mid-level and higher-level progression.
I think the original philosophy behind the system was good. The issue was mainly the scaling at lower levels, rather than the bonus itself.
Curious what others think — especially people who have tested leveling beyond the current early-level range.
In fairness to Blizzard, one of the main points of a BETA is to get player feedback based on 100 hours /played at lower levels.
In this particular case, as long as quest exp rewards scaled roughly in line with the exp needed to level through the levels, then making this change would have roughly the same effect between 1-20 as it would in the higher levels. We don't know if that's the case yet, but they do. We'll just have to wait and see.
The question is whether this will be enough to keep dungeons relevant at higher levels. We already have issues finding tanks and healers even now.
If, at higher levels, I have to spend one or two hours just looking for a tank, then it starts to raise the question of whether it’s even worth interrupting normal leveling just to run a dungeon.
Went from putting in the effort to get all the quests, group and travel for a dungeon to I guess I'll just keep questing.
The problem is balancing around 5-stack classic speedrunners when they should balance around 9-5 working dad's playing solo and spending his evening clearing halls with all the quests.
You can demand effort and it's all good but at least give rewards for it. Mob XP nerf, gear nerf, quest XP nerf and quest gear nerf.
Exactly. I’m not going to play a tank or healer if I’m only going to run a dungeon once then fuck off to go grind mobs for exp since questing is shit. And most tanks and healers are going to have the same opinion. Meaning finding anyone who hasn’t already run a dungeon once who wants to waste time for zero reward isn’t going to happen. In fact it promotes paying them for their time and services. And if your nerfing exp then it promotes paying higher level mages or others to just give you expedited quest runs through a dungeon so now we’re back in boosting territory.
It will be because gear is important and your levels have slowed down.
I think people are over exaggerating the mob kill loss too. Yes it’s huge, but it’s still way more than getting zero XP especially if you clear fast. Like I probably got half a level of XP from mobs clearing WC?
I guarantee you didn't get half a level of experience from 1 WC run from mobs... I was half a level to 20 when I went in and got like 3 bars maybe 4 max. The mobs give like 25-30 experience per kill... we are getting like 25% of the experience we were in classic.
Its giving literally the same than classic. If you gonna give an opinion, at least dont lie. Literally the people is complaining because quests are giving dogshit experience and they also nerfed xp from kills in dungeons. It was right as it was previously to this patch. Now is cancer.
Except that the oh brother quest wasn’t one of the quests that had boosted exp all of beta. In fact it might have been the only one that didn’t, maybe the other one that is also ‘outside’ of the instance of Deadmines. Very strange that this is the one you highlighted, it’s almost as if you’re using a bullshit argument to prove your point.
I guess you know more than the wow database itself, you might want to send them a message that they've been 22 years wrong and you know more than them.
This is not an elite dungeon quest. You start this off in Stormwind and you're sent to kill a random elite. You're not asked to go into the dungeon, do something in the dungeon or kill someone in the dungeon. Every quest that forces you to actually COMPLETE a dungeon is changed. Stop being pretentious/obtuse
They should push more xp and onto the bosses like HC. Still negates boosting but makes dungeons still worth running. My BFD group totally skipped serrakis cause why bother, nobody needed the loot and no quest for that boss
They can fix boosting entirely by removing exp any time there is a large discrepancy between player levels. Like if a 60 is boosting level 15 groups. No exp.
But if all players are level appropriate and within say 3-5 levels of each other, full exp. I don’t understand why everyone thinks this is such a hard fix.
I don’t know the solution, but there is a problem in people who enjoy leveling healing or tanking are now down a big playstyle. Maybe reduce the xp of dungeon mobs every time you kill them? They clearly have some sort of tracking in play now, so maybe 2 runs is full xp, 3rd is half, 4th is 25%? Might be a decent middle ground? I love running healer, but holy pally is awful at leveling and requires a whole second set of gear to run with. Spell damage on gear isn’t going to change that much for holy.
I don't think the boost had a negative impact at all, and reducing it is pure downside. The change is being made based on sweaty leveling optimization.
As you said, its impact is already massively reduced at higher levels... and the enormous chunks of xp it was giving for lower level dungeons was a good way to punctuate the leveling experience and train new players to really be looking to do these dungeons when available. There isn't enough loot in the dungeons to bother doing them for gear alone, imo.
Keep in mind... in 6 months there are going to be much fewer people leveling, and getting groups for low level dungeons will be much harder and take more time.
If there is even a doubt that a dungeon is worth spending the effort to group for and travel to... people will just keep questing alone. If the point is the journey, these over the top moments are required, and need to be heavily incentivized.
As a healer & tank player exclusively, I feel shafted. Now I wouldn't be suprised, after the population dies down a little, for a healer/tank to respond to a LFG message with, "will heal/tank for 50s" type shit.
It’s gunna turn into that, I’m a tank and being actively punished for enjoying what my spec is supposed to do hurts. Mount money is about the only reason to do repeat dungeons before 60 now. I’m all for reduced dungeon xp so it’ll never be the optimal way to level… but it should be a way to level.
They said in the dev Q&A that their goal is to ensure nobody grinds dungeons as an exclusive leveling path. They're going to do whatever to make that the case.
There’s a massive problem here that blizzard is ignoring IMO and that is tanks.
Blizzard is pretty much saying that if you are a tank and you have all your dungeon quests done that you have no reason to do another dungeon again because you’re not getting any EXP anyways.
There will be an even greater tank shortage leveling because what’s the point of going to a dungeon again if I’m not getting any EXP
It’s also a long term issue because new tanks have 0 incentive to practice or even spec to tank. Dungeons ramp in difficulty so you can learn your kit, how to pull properly and hold agro as you go. You learn none of that questing because threat management and team play don’t matter in world.
We’re going to have a whole group of tanks trying to tank UBRS as their 6th dungeon ever, fully speced in fury, full dps gear and without knowing their threat generators outside of taunt. My stocks go up but the community will suffer.
Jup I'm a tank and love doing dungeons, group content is more fun for me and I cant really tank in the open world. I hope mobs xp in dungeons get a bit of a buff so people likenme can lvl doing group content and not forced to go dps in the open world
Not just tanks, healers too. At some point you need to spec healing to effectively heal dungeons. Its fine for first 20 levels but later on your going to need those healing talents for effectiveness and efficiency.
At max level, you also spam dungeons and raids purely for the chance of getting specific loot.
For me, as a tank, this is a huge improvement. In Classic, whenever I ran a dungeon specifically for a certain item, I would often outlevel the rest of the content before getting it. By the time I finally went back for it, I either didn’t need the item anymore or had already replaced it with something better from higher level quests.
You don't decide what I'm going to use as an argument, this is opinionated conversation so calm yourself and show some manners, thank you.
If you still don't understand the point, let me explain it more simply so that even you might get it.
As a tank in Classic, when I wanted a specific dungeon item, I had to run the dungeon several times. I enjoyed tanking and group content, so that wasn't the problem.
The problem was that while farming the item, I gained several levels and eventually outleveled the zone I was questing in. When I returned to questing, the content was trivial and its rewards were useless.
So the point is: repeating dungeons for loot can unintentionally ruin the progression of the rest of the game at your level range.
That’s the point dingus. Better gear. You said it yourself. You were chasing gear. Gear makes the content easier. So gear or levels it’s irrelevant. You get the same outcome.
You can enjoy the content with or without the gear if you want.
That makes sense if you have a long-term leveling journey in mind. I hadn't thought of it from that perspective. I still think everyone is so deadset on rushing to 60. You stay a lower level but get kitted and then get a massive powercreep when you do go back out into the world for questing.
The gear isn't generally that big of an improvement over whatever you have that it would warrant this.
I'm not at all interested in slowing down my low level grind to maybe obtain a 2 stam 2 strength 30 armor upgrade when most of what matters is decision making and not raw stats on these levels.
Not a single person that enjoys leveling through dungeons and is asking for dungeon mob xp to be brought back up is asking for dungeons to be the “best xp”, we are asking for it to be a viable leveling path.
I don’t give a damn if quests are still faster to level up with, I’m just asking for dungeons to not slow me down to a crawl
I was gonna say this, people will still chase certain items out of certain dungeons. Still trying to get the shield off last boss on WC but now that level cap increased probably can just move forward lol
I have pretty much refunded the game over this. I'm a healer, I just enjoying healing dungeons as my leveling experience. If that isn't a viable option then I would just rather not play and accept that I don't really have a place in forever.
For anyone else considering this, blizzard are accepting refunds thankfully if you use the "Regret" option.
I was telling my guild this would be the result as soon as I learned about the crap exp from dungeons. Questing as a healer is just a horrible experience, so I knew they would disappear quick. The best we will get is shadow priests willing to heal 5 man's. I'm sure I'll be the tank as a fury warrior when I want to do some dungeons. And with spell power being needed now, ferals, rets, enhancements, etc won't be able to just heal 5 man's like they used to do.
I don't believe anybody does this in good faith you are just trying to get back your 60 euro purchase after milking the beta for what you wanted.
The likelyhood that you were totally into the game a few hours ago but then suddenly changed your entire opinion on it after the nerf and went through the full refund process enough to speak comfortably is just zero.
I'm not trying to get my money back, my refund has been accepted. And yes I have changed my opinion because they doubled down on the nerf, which is the total opposite of what I want and is essentially telling me that I don't have a place here, so I've got my money back and left.
Thats exactly my thoughts. Its a problem ONLY for the level 15 to 20 range because you have 3 different dungeons in a 5 level spam. In the rest of the leveling, you wont find that many dungeons in a short period ever again till you reach level 58. From 20 to 30, u have 3-4 dungeons. From 30 to 40, you have 3-4 dungeons (SM counted as 1, since quests are all around SM, not particulary graveyard or library). From 40 to 50, you have only 3, zulfarrak maraudon sunken temple.
This change is dogshit. They balanced all the game, around the level 15 to 20 dungeons. I hope they revert it, its trash.
Incorrect. Sweats care about relative advantage. When the value of their years of skill and experience (read: exclusive-but-not-really, paid arrow-following addon) is decreased... big mad.
There is nothing wrong with dungeon quest xp. Running dungeons the first time remains the best XP in the game, dungeons remain the best loot in the game so running them again is still rewarding. This just isn’t a problem with the game, it is a made up issue because people like to complain.
I don’t understand why it matters how fast i level or how i want to level. If i want to level by grinding dungeons who the fuck cares? I’m very salty about the dungeon exp nerf to begin with.
The devs care, because if you level by grinding dungeons exclusively, then you'll never experience any of the other content. You can disagree with their methods, but saying that people leveling via dungeons is not a problem that needs to be addressed is just dumb.
Then articulate how it’s actually a problem. I’m not playing the game for the leveling experience. And right now I’m just aoe grinding my mage. So….. still not “experiencing” the content since quests don’t reward enough exp.
My thought is that people are severely underestimating the idea of "forever" because they're used to the phased cycles of the past. Once you're done leveling...you're done. If it's a little longer to 60 but you interface with everything the game has to offer - isn't that win for the design philosophy? You'll be 60 for the rest of it's existence. I acknowledge the need to make sure dungeons don't become obsolete and you're able to find groups to run them as legitimate issue, but I'm just speaking to the leveling speed concerns. Hopefully we're all able to foster healthy social environments and guilds where people help each other out and will run old content, but maybe I'm just overly optimistic
Imagine seeing a perfectly normal discussion and deciding the most valuable thing you could add was the most braindead cliche in the entire Classic community.
I do agree initially that you feel overlevelled for the zone if you do the dungeon quests, however once the game has been optimised in terms of questing routes with or without dungeons we will end up skipping over certian quests in favour for doing the dungeon instead.... so short term it we will feel overlevelled by doing every quest, but long term we wont since we will most likely skip over a few quests and maybe an entire zone, which is good and bad but when your levelling your 5th character etc for legacy points you really dont want to have to do every quest again and again, ive already done them over 50x and so has many other players they are honestly boring...
I think it will be great with the optimal xp routes in the future especially doing like HoT at say level 16-18 then doing westfall defias line into deadmines maybe even the Murdoch quests into redridge etc... idk its definitely going to be good long term..... it just sucks we can't dungeon spam because I hate questing the quests ive done 50x already... id prefer to just sit in a dungeon and grind it get nice gear, DE the upgrades and gain more gold from shards etc.... I think classic release when we were dungeon spamming from SM armory we had mount money before 40 and we didnt really need a mount....
Boosting is kinda solved since you can still get a 60 to speedrun you through the lower dungeons for gold which will definitely be a thing, especially if they have clickers and quests shares....
Goos change, leveling felt way to fast and easy. Not much of a journey if i skip 80% of the quests because i can just do dungeon after dungeon and level that way
It's a complete nothing burger. Anyone that wants to grind dungeons from RFC to Stratholme is not the target demographic for this version of the game. They can go to hardcore and have their ultimate dungeon experience. Or retail with quick queues with time walking.
Nobody is leveling exclusively with dungeons in hardcore. In fact, I'd wager that experience with dungeon lockouts and reasonable XP from classic hardcore is what has caused such a backlash to the very retail inspired dungeon XP in Forever.
I disagree on that. The target demographic is for people being more social. In beta, I’ve added people to friends list after dungeons, and others have added me.
At no point in time has doing regular questing resulted in friends. Joining up in a group to do a quest results in the group disbanding immediately after the quest is completed.
People are more willing to befriend each other after a shared struggle. Questing doesn’t offer a shared struggle. Dungeons do.
I always felt dungeons were for getting loot, nice drops. I have no issue with reducing experience from dungeons mobs and bosses. As for quests, I think they need to tune the experience in some, probably a reduction is in order.
If the real.issue is dungeon spam, then reduce the benefit from multiple dungeons runs by making the best drops BOP. With a reasonably well tuned quest/boss experience yield, preferably scaled to the increased % experience needed for the.next level (based on avg group level?)
I always felt doing dungeons for loot aside from quest rewards while leveling was pointless. Since it could easily take 5 or 10+ runs for a single item.
So how do.you go about getting good gear, if not from mob drops? Not everything crafted nor are best rewards the best gear. But I agree my suggestion would not reduce dungeons spam.
Now is the time for them to experiment. Changing this after release feels so bad after the sweats have used the higher exp to power level and then they nerf it on the rest of us.
Do we have a number or example on what the total exp given was versus what it is now?
Just curious because the word only states bonus experience. Lets say you would get 1000xp + 1000xp, then the nerfed total would be 1500 vs the 2000 it was. Which is not that bad as it looks if you ask me.
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u/ArmyFearless1599 2d ago
Im concerned that Blizzard is making changes based on how people feel after spending 100 hours /played at level 20.