Dungeon kill XP was paying out at the group's highest level, and that bug is being fixed

The dungeon experience argument has been the loudest thing in the WoW Forever beta since the beta opened. We covered it a week in, at over a thousand forum posts with no reply, and again when the level 30 build cut dungeon quest experience in half.

On October 8 a developer finally answered it — and buried in the reply is a bug that changes how you should read every XP-per-hour measurement testers have posted.

The bug: your XP was somebody else’s level

In the beta builds so far, experience per kill inside a dungeon was calculated from the highest-level character in the group, not from your own level.

Aggrend’s example is the clear one: a level 20 running the Deadmines with four other level 20s and one level 25 earns extremely little per kill. The game was treating the whole group as though it were the level 25’s.

That is being fixed. Your experience per kill will come from your own level against the mob’s, which is how it was meant to work all along.

Plus 20% on base kill experience

Alongside the fix, Aggrend refers to a 20% increase to base kill experience in dungeons. Combined, he says the two should make dungeon runs “feel better and more even”.

Why this matters beyond the number: a great deal of the beta’s dungeon XP evidence came from mixed-level groups, which is how most pick-up groups form. Those groups were being quietly taxed by the bug on top of the quest XP cut. Some of the gap testers measured was the nerf, and some of it was this — and nobody could separate the two from inside the game.

Blizzard’s line on dungeon levelling

The rest of the post is the part that will not settle the argument. In summary, and in Blizzard’s own framing:

• Experience in dungeons will not return to what it was in Classic Era, but it should feel significantly better than it does now.
• The team understands that some players want to cleave dungeons to 60, and says that playstyle being the optimal way to level does not pass its design pillars. The post is blunt about it: they need to hold firm on the balance adjustments.
• After the changes, with perfect experience-per-hour play, dungeon levelling should land very close to, if not equal to, optimal questing. Aggrend adds the observation that this is a measure of how far ahead dungeons were in Era.
• The two pillars named are “World is the Main Character” and “Nurture and Protect Social Experiences”, and the argument is that once dungeons become the clear winner, player behaviour cascades.

That last claim is the real disagreement, and it is a design argument rather than a factual one. Parity with questing is a deliberate target, not an accident of tuning.

The scale of what this is answering

The threads are not a handful of complaints. One of them, Dungeon Experience - The Hypocrisy, passed 1,078 posts. Huge L for nerfing dungeon quest XP is at 329. There is also a thread titled We were wrong about dungeons with over a hundred posts, where part of the pro-dungeon camp walked its position back.

It is also worth noting where the answer appeared: as a reply in the thread for podcast episode 3, which is about dungeons and features a community guest. Aggrend opens by saying the experience fix did not get mentioned in the podcast itself.

Update, 8 October: it is live, with a fuller explanation

Hours after the forum reply, Blizzard posted its first development notes since 1 October, and the build carries both changes. The written note goes further than the forum post did:

• In Classic Era the low-level kill penalty was worked out individually for each party member, with no regard for the highest-level member. Forever had been applying it from the highest-level member instead, and the calculation is now reverted to the Classic Era behaviour, where only your own level matters.
• Blizzard’s own expectation for the two changes together: they will dramatically increase experience earned in dungeons for most players.
• One limit is restated: if a party member is at a vastly higher level than the enemy, nobody in the party gets experience. That is intended and has not changed.

So the honest reading of the past three weeks is that two separate things were stacked on top of each other: a deliberate cut to dungeon quest experience, and a bug that quietly taxed every mixed-level group. Only one of them was a design decision.

What we still do not know

• Which build the bug fix and the 20% land in, and whether either is already live. Answered on 8 October: both shipped the same evening in build 1.60.1.70291, and the change log is the first one Blizzard has posted since 1 October.
• The resulting numbers. “Close to questing” is a target, not a rate, and nobody has measured the fixed version yet.
• Whether the halved quest experience stays halved. Nothing in the post revisits that change.

Our dungeon pages carry the quest lists and walkthroughs for the level bands that are open, and the levelling guides assume questing as the spine.