The decision to remove the XP to gold conversion at maximum level in WoW Forever was a controversial one. Players are unhappy with the change, but today Blizzard are taking steps to address the concerns. While we’re not getting the max-level gold exchange back, we are getting more gold. In an upcoming hotfix (coming within 24 hours), quests of level 48 and higher will be getting either additional gold if they already had it, or a brand new gold reward!
In Forever, when players reach maximum level, the XP gains for quest just vanish, and don’t turn into gold, unlike in Classic Era. The thinking was that players might hoard quests until they reached 60, just grinding mobs for XP, which would make for some bad gameplay. However, it seems that too few quests have appropriate gold rewards as it is, so removing this extra gain turned out to be a bad thing. This is why the buffs are coming, so let’s see if they’re enough.
When we evaluated the economy going into WoW: Forever, we made a conscious choice to disable the XP-to-Gold conversion for quests completed at maximum level. This change was originally introduced in 2006 in the weeks leading up the original Burning Crusade launch, and it was intended to provide a boost in gold for players who were wrapping up original WoW content in preparation for the first expansion.
We left that functionality in place in Classic Era in 2019, but we decided that for WoW: Forever, we would remove the XP to Gold conversion, as it created an incentive for players to hold a full quest log worth of completed quests to hand in after hitting level 60 for maximum gold returns. Under those conditions, the optimal way for players to level to 60 was to simply grind creatures for XP and not hand in quests at all, which is not a design we want to retain in WoW: Forever.
However, in original WoW, only about 25% of quests in the game actually provide raw gold rewards, which led this to be a slightly more negative change than intended to gold income as you get closer to level 60.
To address this, we’re preparing a hotfix that will add additional gold rewards to most quests with a quest level of level 48 or higher, including adding gold to quests above level 48 that never previously rewarded gold at all. The idea here is that you should feel good about doing quests at the appropriate level to progress your character, and you should feel adequately rewarded with gold for doing so.
The hotfix should be go live in the next 24 hours or so. Thank you for your feedback!