Players said it was hurting friends who level together, and Blizzard changed it the next day. WoW: Forever’s new dungeon XP rule now only switches off experience when a high-level player in the group is more than 12 levels above the enemies, instead of whenever a mob is trivial to anyone in the party. The adjustment went live in a hotfix on the evening of Friday, November 14.
Watch the short YouTubeThe November 13 hotfix zeroed dungeon XP for the whole party
Blizzard’s November 13 hotfix notes added one line under Dungeons: “Killing enemies in dungeons now awards zero experience to all party members if the level of the enemy is trivial to the level of one or more of the party members.”
Blizzard didn’t give a reason, but the rule shuts down the classic dungeon boost, where a high-level character clears an instance while lower-level players soak up the experience. It arrived less than a week after Blizzard raised dungeon kill XP by 50%, which made dungeons a much more attractive way to level.
A 6-level gap was enough to wipe out a friend’s XP
The problem was the word “trivial”. An enemy turns grey, and stops counting, at a much smaller level gap than most boosts involve, so ordinary groups of friends a few levels apart were losing their experience too. The biggest complaint thread on the official forums passed 300 replies, and its opening post put it plainly:
“I have friends that have out leveled me by AT LEAST THAT and still want to play with me. You claim to want us grouping up with friends, then pull this? A level 19 shouldn’t torpedo a level 13, that is just silly.”
Megadungeons with a wide level range drew their own complaints, with one forum thread titled “Blackrock Depths feels terrible with the new hotfix”.
Blizzard admits the rule “missed the mark” and sets a 12-level line
Community manager Kaivax posted the fix on the official forums:
“For some dungeons, the new restriction missed the mark because of the overall level range of the enemies in the dungeon. With hotfixes that are now live, we’ve just deployed a further change to this restriction, making it so that the XP nullification only kicks in when the high-level player is more than 12 levels above the level of the enemies.”
One catch: the change doesn’t apply to dungeon runs that were already underway when it went live, so a group mid-instance has to reset to get the new rule.
Players on the forums are thanking Blizzard for the quick turnaround
The first replies under Kaivax’s post are almost all thanks. “+12 levels is enough to curtail boosting, but not enough to impact players normally trying to [complete] quests in the megadungeons,” one player wrote. Another added: “I like that you are making bold decisions and also reflecting on them and adjusting. I’d rather you go too far and then step back than make ineffectual changes.”
