One of the hot topics currently being discussed in the WoW Forever Beta is the matter of leveling with dungeons vs. questing in the open world. After recent dungeon experience changes in Phase 2 of the Beta cycle, discussion heated up about the matter.
In this week’s WoW Forever Podcast, developers Senior Game Designers Josh “Aggrend” Greenfield, Jay Hartman, and Rowan Ryder talked a bit about the subject, announced an upcoming mob kill experience buff to dungeons, and a bug fix with experience involving higher-level players in the group!
Players in Dungeons vs. the Open World and Developer Intent
In Classic Era and Anniversary realms, dungeon leveling was often employed as an optimal strategy to level, especially with groups tailored for AOE damage such as spellcleave compositions. Changes to reduce dungeon experience and rewards went live with the October 1st Beta update.
WoW Forever Beta Development Notes – Updated October 1
- Developers’ notes: We appreciate the feedback on leveling speed as we continue ongoing discussions about the Beta. As part of those discussions, we’ve decided to reduce the amount of XP granted from dungeon quests with this release. Certain quest rewards have also been recalibrated.
- Dungeon quests now reward 50% less extra experience beyond normal quest values.
This has reignited the debate of dungeons vs. open world for leveling. Dungeons at this point give very little experience if you do not complete any quests, making spamming them very ineffective if you’re just looking for experience.
Many arguments have surged within the community about this, about how to balance the leveling experience while still making the world of Azeroth feel lively for WoW Forever. Players who are more inclined to run dungeons for longer periods of time are feeling like they’re being forced into a leveling playstyle they may not necessarily enjoy, if dungeons are not worth running more than 1-2 times for the sake of completing quests.
Dungeon Mob Experience Increased by 20% in the Future
In today’s WoW Forever Podcast, this has been touched on. Developers are looking into ways to increase dungeon experience while not making dungeon spamming the optimal way to level. The first change announced is a 20% experience buff from mob kills in dungeons.
They are continuing to look into feedback on balancing dungeon experience vs. open world questing, so let them know how you feel about it!
Countdown to Classic: From my experience, even with the reduction in mob experience inside dungeons, the quest experience even after the nerf, I think it still feels pretty good. I know a lot of people want to know if anything is going to change there.
Rowan Ryder: We’ve heard this feedback. We do listen. We see all these forum posts, these reddit and social media posts. We understand that there is frustration with where it (dungeon experience) landed right now. I think it is a good time to remind that this is being tuned actively. We will continue tweaking the numbers. Please give us your feedback as you say these things, we’d love to hear it. Philosophically, the goal for how times you should run a dungeon, we don’t want you to just necessarily run it once and be done with it. And I think that’s where we landed in the last iteration. We don’t want dungeons to be a one-and-done experience. We want people in there, we spend a lot of time making them and playing the, and we want to make sure people can repeat them. We will continue to tweak it and continue to keeping an eye on feedback. Importantly, we also want to make sure that just grinding dungeons is the optimal way to play. We want to make sure that there is a reason to go into the outside world, there is a reason to hang out with different people, have different experiences. But that shouldn’t come at the cost of dungeons feeling unrewarding or unexciting to play.
Josh Greenfield: In terms of this specific update, I think we can tip our hat a little bit, and announcing that we are increasing the amount of experience gained from dungeon kills by about 20%. So that should help a little bit. The intent is for you to feel good about running a dungeon, either through getting item rewards, also the first-time quests, obviously that’s going to feel the most lucrative. That’s how it was in original WoW too. The intention there is to find that sweet spot where it feels good to run a dungeon, but it’s not the most optimal way to do. We don’t want the game to be like, “oh I’m doing Scarlet Monastery Cathedral 50 times, from 30 to 50, and that’s the whole game”. There is definitely a middle ground and something we’re gonna keep working on.
Bug With Dungeon Experience – Higher Levels Nerfing XP For Everyone in the Group
In addition to what was said in the podcast, Josh Greenfield went on Twitter to talk about a bug that was not discussed in the podcast: A bug currently going on in the Forever Beta is that experience per kill was being awarded based on the highest-level person in the group, indirectly nerfing experience for everyone in the group.
Greenfield believes that this fix, combined with the aforementioned dungeon experience buff, will make it so leveling rates in dungeons are close to what you would get with optimal questing.
He also reiterates that they do not want dungeons to feel as lucrative (in regard to experience gains) as they were in Classic Era, following up with the pillars of exploration that WoW Forever is based on.
How do you feel about this topic? Do you like spamming dungeons, questing all the way to max level, or a healthy mix between both?