Helping a lower-level friend through a dungeon is one of World of Warcraft's oldest traditions. Somewhere in Azeroth, a guild's slightly overleveled Warrior has always been willing to escort four enthusiastic adventurers through Scarlet Monastery, provided somebody remembers to bring the quests and nobody accidentally pulls the entire cathedral.
But a new WoW Forever dungeon XP rule means that helping your friends can now have an unfortunate side effect: preventing them from earning experience.
In its November 13 hotfixes, Blizzard announced that killing dungeon enemies awards zero experience to the entire party whenever an enemy is considered trivial to at least one group member. The restriction may discourage high-level boosting, but players are already reporting problems in ordinary groups with relatively small level differences.
How WoW Forever's New Dungeon XP Rule Works
The important distinction is that the restriction applies to individual enemies, not automatically to an entire dungeon. If a monster is too low-level to award experience to one group member, nobody receives kill XP from that particular monster. Enemies that remain eligible are not automatically affected.
That sounds reasonable when a level 60 character is carrying a group of level 20 adventurers. Unfortunately, dungeons often contain enemies covering a surprisingly wide range of levels, and players do not necessarily encounter them at the same point in their leveling journey.
In a November 14 discussion on Blizzard's forums, one player described being level 36 and still eligible for Razorfen Kraul through Group Finder, despite some of its enemies being trivial to that character. According to the report, this means joining an otherwise appropriate group could deny lower-level members experience from those enemies.
Other players in the discussion described similar frustrations when accompanying friends through lower-level dungeons. These are individual player reports rather than independently verified measurements, but they highlight a potential problem with the new rule.
The timing is particularly interesting. Blizzard had only recently increased dungeon enemy XP by 50% after complaints that repeated dungeon runs were insufficiently rewarding. During the October beta, developers also corrected an earlier experience calculation bug involving higher-level party members.
The November 13 restriction introduces a different limitation. The hotfix concerns experience from enemy kills; Blizzard did not announce a corresponding change to dungeon quest rewards.
Can Blizzard Stop Boosting Without Punishing Normal Groups?
There is a reasonable argument for preventing high-level characters from turning low-level dungeons into experience factories. Classic WoW has a long history of players discovering that the fastest way through an adventure is occasionally to let somebody else do all the adventuring.
Blizzard has also been clear about Forever's emphasis on outdoor leveling. The developers want players exploring Azeroth rather than spending their entire journey repeating the same instance.
But ordinary group play is another matter. Tanks and healers are not always available at the perfect level, and friends rarely progress through Azeroth at identical speeds. A player who has outleveled part of a dungeon may still need its quests, equipment or other rewards. That does not automatically make them a booster.
Blizzard's earlier changes to dungeon quest experience already raised questions about the rewards for group content. With nine entirely new dungeons added to Forever, making normal groups feel rewarding remains important.
For players planning dungeon runs primarily for experience, the immediate advice is to check both party levels and enemy levels. A character who is only moderately higher-level may still cause some enemies to award no kill XP to anyone else.
The restriction is understandable as a possible response to boosting, although Blizzard has not explained its precise design intentions in the hotfix notes. Whether the developers will adjust the thresholds or Group Finder recommendations remains unknown.
World of Warcraft has always been about more than optimizing experience per hour. Sometimes it is about convincing the guild's strongest Warrior to spend an evening helping four hopelessly underprepared adventurers survive a dungeon.
It would be rather unfortunate if the biggest threat to that tradition turned out to be the experience system itself.
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