The Glaring Mistake With WoW: Forever Dungeon XP

The WoW: Forever Beta is coming to a close, yet one thing still remains unchanged: the dungeon XP nerf Blizzard implemented.

Dungeon Nerf Explanation

WoW: Forever’s Beta launched with a drastic decrease to mob XP in dungeons, while at the same time vastly boosting dungeon quest XP rewards while adding additional dungeon quests.

On October 8th, Blizzard cut the quest XP reward by 50% due to it being over-tuned, and also raised the mob XP rewards by 20%. However, this hasn’t changed the fact that it’s still not worthwhile to run dungeons once you complete the dungeon quests.

The Mistake Blizzard Is Making

In the 2nd podcast episode, and in other interviews, Blizzard stated that the goal with these dungeon changes is to make the open world the main draw for players. They want players out questing. They want the world to feel full and alive. And most importantly, they want players being social.

This “being social” point has been frequently brought up, and for many players it is just the complete wrong approach. I’ll be honest, when I have quested throughout my 15+ years playing WoW, 99% of the time it is a solo experience. Yes, sometimes I invite someone to my party and we silently kill mobs for a kill quest, instantly disbanding when the quest is complete. Yes, there are the occasional group quests like Hogger. But a vast majority of questing is solo content.

Dungeons, on the other hand, have provided the most social experiences I’ve ever had playing WoW when leveling - and I think this is where Blizzard is missing the mark. To claim that questing, and getting people in the open world, is more important socially than running dungeons is just flat out wrong. Dungeon running is where I’ve met people to add to my friends list, where I’ve had hours long conversations, where I’ve found my guild that I end up playing hundreds of hours with. It is where I feel that my role in an MMORPG is the most influential.

Unless Blizzard has a plan to make group quests much more common throughout the leveling experience (based on the beta this is not the case so far) then their logic seems backwards and I think they’re actually promoting solo play more than they realize.

Current Issues

Issues with this system are already popping up in the beta:

• There is really no reason to run a dungeon after completing it’s quests. You can get gear of course, but the XP earned is so low that you’re much better off questing instead of gear chasing. Gear chasing in dungeons and leveling while doing it is one of the most fun ways to play the game for me.
• Retail Mythic+ style dungeon skips are being done. What’s the point of killing all the mobs in a dungeon if you only need to kill certain mobs/bosses, or go to certain areas of the dungeon, to complete the quests?
• A lack of healers and tanks, which is always a problem, is even more pronounced in Forever. Again, a healer or tank runs the dungeon until they complete their quests, and moves on. They don’t keep running it and keep filling new groups.

Ways to Fix This

Personally I don’t think dungeon spamming all the way up through the leveling process is all that fun, but spamming once in a while, or for a certain piece of gear, can be an absolute blast.

I shouldn’t feel like I only need to complete a few quests and then never return to a dungeon. But I also shouldn’t feel like running dungeons is by far the best way to level… So how can it be fixed?

In my opinion, the best option here is a system that Blizzard has used in WoW since the beginning: diminishing returns. Essentially, the first time you run a dungeon, you get the XP you used to get pre-Forever. The next time, it drops by X%, etc etc. It could be on an exponential curve, so that they first 3 or so runs in a day are pretty solid XP, and then runs after that have a more drastic drop off.

This would be per dungeon, per character, and could be on a daily reset.

Another interesting option I’ve seen mentioned is a Dungeon Token, where completing a dungeon rewards a token of completion, and then running that dungeon again with the token gives the possibility of rare gear drops on bosses that con only be obtained with the token. This would make the gear chase make more sense, as long as the gear was good enough or cool enough to be worth it!

Dungeon Boosting Fix

But what about dungeon boosting? Well, I think diminishing returns is a good first step, but if you have a player that is much higher than the dungeon’s mob level range, then the group simply shouldn’t get any XP. That seems pretty simple to me.

Final Thoughts

At the end of the day, Blizzard is creating so many cool dungeons, that it will be a shame if we’re only running them once or twice each during our leveling journey.

I want to experience them to their fullest potential. I want to hunt all the new gear. I want to feel like a god as the healer. Feel like my role selection actually matters before level 60. I want to meet new people, take bio breaks, and laugh about how we’re all “working” with potential new friends in dungeon groups.

The current system isn’t the right answer, and it’s up to us to keep making suggestions until things get fixed!