World of Warcraft Forever Dungeon Experience Buffed, but There's a Long Way to Go

World of Warcraft Forever has been a massive hit, and I've seen hundreds of players in pretty much every part of the game. After Blizzard massively nerfed dungeon experience early on in the Forever beta, the company has finally given it a bit of a buff, but it might not be enough.

World of Warcraft Forever community manager Kaivax posted on the WoW forums that dungeon experience would be getting a 50% buff Sunday morning, which did help make dungeons a better way to level your character. But, as the community pointed out, even with this massive 50% buff, the dungeon experience you get is still way less than you'd get in the original version of World of Warcraft classic.

Back when World of Warcraft Forever was first announced, Blizzard's Kris Zierhut did an interview with The Sun talking about how experience from killing monsters in dungeons was "brought way down" The reason he gave for that change was wanting players to focus on leveling out in the open world, saying, "You’d be better off going to Shen’dralas or Riverglades or Hyjal instead of grinding a dungeon. We want people in the outdoor world meeting each other."

On October 8, Blizzard let up a bit, increasing dungeon experience by about 20%. But, because dungeon experience was already around 80% lower than it was on Classic, this 20% buff didn't actually make leveling in dungeons much more viable. Still, Blizzard left it at that level throughout the rest of the beta. Then, over the weekend, as WoW Forever players finally started doing dungeons, it was clear that they just weren't providing enough experience. Enter Sunday's 50% dungeon experience buff.

I actually ran dungeons both on Saturday and Sunday – Ragefire Chasm on Saturday and Ruins of Lordaeron on Sunday – and I did notice a difference. But even though I could tell that my experience bar was filling a bit slower, with the amount of time the dungeons take, you should be able to get one or two full levels out of them. And I'm not alone there; on Reddit, one player even did the math to figure out how far away dungeon experience is from Classic, even with the new buff.

According to aritalo on Reddit, even with the buffs, dungeon enemies are still only rewarding about a third of the experience they do in Classic.

Dungeon experience, even now, is extremely divisive in the community. User InterestingCell5247 writes, "The main problems with dungeons having nerfed exp rates is that its harder to find groups since if you already did the quests you have no reason to go back. But there are also knock-on effects like fewer people feeling incentivized to roll tanks and healers, because those roles generally sacrifice open world leveling speed/efficiency for easier access to dungeons."

Meanwhile, user ACoolGuy-Promise just wishes Blizzard was more clear on the final numbers, saying, "They can’t say “X percent“ of classic values? Just obfuscating this sh*t for no reason. This is barely a buff."

On the forums, however, there are players who are upset that Blizzard caved to the demand for more dungeon experience. For instance, player Kassa posted, "I knew blizzard would cave," and then followed that up by posting, "and I knew even this buff wouldn’t be good enough for the complainers. Blizzard, you have solved nothing. Now they just know to beg louder."

Only time will tell whether or not Blizzard will further buff dungeon experience in WoW Forever, but in the meantime, there does seem to be a ton of players out in the open world. But as more of them filter into World of Warcraft Forever, it's decisions like this that'll decide the shape of the MMO in the years to come. Blizzard has been pretty adament about not changing things that'd alter the spirit of the game, like group tagging. But with this experience change, along with the 20% buff in October, Blizzard is clearly open to tweaking the rate at which players gain experience.