r/classicwow • u/redlow0992 • 4h ago

Forever Beta Feedback Dungeon XP Nerfs Created a Toxic Meta

Since dungeon monsters do not give any experience, as a new player, getting into dungeons with more veteran players who try to skip half the dungeon feels really bad. And, vice-versa, veterans taking in newbies who don't know how to jump around feels frustrating. I think Blizzard created a mess with nerfing dungeon exp so much and now the new player experience is horrible for dungeons.

1.5k Upvotes

80% Upvoted

1.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

•

u/nacholibre711 4h ago

Really shortsighted and frankly bad solution. I agree we needed to nerf dungeon spamming, but there were so many better ways to go about it.

Dungeon quest speed runs aren't fun, dungeons are fun.

•

u/avocadorancher 4h ago

As a newish player, why did dungeon spamming need to be nerfed?

•

u/The-Only-Razor 2h ago

It didn't. Everyone saying it was the optimal way to level are wrong. Absolutely no leveling guide tuned to maximum efficiency recommends dungeon spam.

It's probably the laziest way to level, which I guess is a fair argument against it. I would argue that's fine though, and that these changes are trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist.

•

u/So_Full_Of_Fail 1h ago

Its the fastest in the world where you have to compete in the open world for spawns, deal with open world lag, etc.

That part fixes itself after the first like month as the playerbase stratifies across zones.

The classic launch on high pop servers, the first couple weeks the open world was a shitshow.

•

u/AltruisticInstance58 4h ago

It didn't. It just puts the game on rails more so you play how the devs want you to play instead of how you want to play. Kinda weird for an open world MMO.

•

u/Dabeston 4h ago

It’s just more reliable xp on launches. Most people who level after the initial wave primarily quest. It’s harder to quest when EVERYONE is also trying to quest

•

u/Sixgunslime 2h ago

This is mitigated heavily by realmless

•

u/Nrgte 37m ago

Let's not kid ourselves, the Defias Messenger couldn't walk a single step without getting tagged in Westfall.

•

u/Sixgunslime 23m ago

For about 1-2 days

•

u/Dabeston 1h ago

I don’t think so, every layer is gonna be popping the first week.

•

u/Frekavichk 4h ago

That doesn't address what they said.

•

u/Dabeston 4h ago

Sometime comments add to what people are saying, people don’t need to address every point, they can expand upon it.

•

u/Udon_noodles 4h ago

Not the real answer

•

u/Lochen9 3h ago

Disingenuous answer. The reason was that people would and did pay for boosting in dungeons, and wouldn't play the game. It was to combat RMT and give people a reason to go out and quest and do dungeons. It also prevents people from min maxing the game out of the game by just spamming the same dungeon over and over in spell cleave groups to level.

Wanting to stay in the same dungeon afk and letting a bot level you is Kinda weird for an open world MMO. Wouldn't you say?

Ive played like 4 characters to 20, and its incredibly fast doing each dungeon 1 time from 13 to 20 in like 2 hours.

•

u/ItsAriaNow 3h ago

it has nothing to do with boosting. boosting has been nearly entirely killed by having a 60 in the party give no xp and not being infinitely slowed so the only remaining boosting is at the very end of leveling.

why does it matter if some people want to min max dungeon spamming? it’s not really anyone place to say min maxing shouldn’t be allowed. you can still be unoptimal if you want.

•

u/Lochen9 3h ago

No need to be emotional about it. Blizzard responded to the question and had an in depth reason why they did it. You are infereing something else because you're upset. And certainly not the answer a new player was looking to get.

•

u/ItsAriaNow 3h ago

No one is upset. You just got disagreed with and have no response.

•

u/Lochen9 3h ago

My response is Blizzard answered that exact question in the QA's at Blizzcon, and yours was made up implications on how the devs think based off your feelings

•

u/Fyreraven 2h ago

What's to keep the mega guilds from placing a tank and healer combo at the entrance to a dungeon and saying to the lower level players "We'll run you through for [insert known amount of gold drop for that dungeon (averge) cut in half], we'll give you all the loot." And then yanking a pack of newbie dps through the dungeon at break neck speed? We all know that Tanks and Healers are going to level out of dungeons faster and leave the DPS behind. That's happening now in Mythics in retail.

•

u/Lochen9 2h ago edited 2h ago

Nothing other than logistics. You would need to find a new set of 3 every time you run, instead of people sticking around for multiple in a row, and not needing to refill the group every single run.

People wouldn't want to wait around for a group to fill if they are paying if they can just get a normal group and not pay, and the whole thing kinda falls apart on the premise. They would pay for convenience, and if its not more convenient, they would not. Simple as that really

•

u/Fyreraven 2h ago

I've dug into this and apparently Blizzard has made it so if a high level character is in your group, your personal exp is reduced. We'll see how that goes.

•

u/Lochen9 2h ago

Wouldn't matter to your suggestion. The exp from kills is nerfed for sure, but going from 19 exp per kill to 1 isn't a big deal. The quests are the reason to run the dungeon as far as experience goes. Your suggestion and boosts absolutely would work on a singular basis, like a friend group helping an alt out.

It's just the money making possibility off it is unlikely

•

u/-Oc- 3h ago

Really ironic thing to say, because spamming dungeons removed people from the world.

Also, I'm all for choice, but when the "optimal" choice is to spend 20 levels spamming SM over and over again versus being out there in the world, questing and meeting new people, I'll gladly accept having that choice "made" for me.

Blizzard know this too, which is why the camping system was implemented, and can only be placed in the open world.

There was no ideal solution, but at least Blizzard is trying!

•

u/kaos95 3h ago

Spending 14 levels in SM was never the most "optimal" choice, but, playing a priest on a pvp realm it was the only workable choice.

Did you see STV a week after launch on the PvP realms, rogues as far as the eyes could see. You ever tried leveling a priest while between 6 and 19 rogues are stalking you? There are tons of clips on youtube of level 40ish rogues doing exactly this, the no-lifer 60 also came down and in my realm notably camped right in the trolls up north.

So yeah, we ran SM past STV levels, duh . . . It was a response to external pressure rather than the "optimal" thing.

•

u/Drasha1 2h ago

Even on pve servers stv questing was basically impossible with mob spawns being camped and slow respawns.

•

u/Smooth_One 2h ago

The difference maker here for me is the experience I had playing TBCA. Doing anything in the open world during TBCA was dreadful because Blizzard never get the layers in a good place.

I hope they're trying really fucking hard to improve that aspect of the game and aren't planning to rely entirely on these feelsbad nerfs.

On the SM front though, IIRC that's one of the huge reasons they added the Riverglades (plus the dozens of other quests they've sprinkled throughout the world around those levels). SM was mostly great because the lack of available quests made it the better alternative, so even without these ridiculously obtuse and short-sighted nerfs it would've been much better than it is in Vanilla.

•

u/vincentkun 3h ago

Putting limits in what a playet can do is basic game design. If you have a much more efficient way to level and don't limit it somehow then players will take it.

•

u/InSearchOfThe9 3h ago

It abso-fucking-lutely did need to be nerfed lol. Having the most efficient leveling route be farm Deadmines from 17-22, farm Stockades until 28, and then farm SM until 42 (oh my fucking god) was the most nightmarishly boring and terrible meta we've ever seen. It killed the world, killed enjoyment, incentivized paid boosting, and overall just made the game objectively worse.

•

u/Unpaid_Moderation 3h ago

Many people would rather spam dungeons. It's fun killing things in a group. They're mega servers too, there's always going to be people in the world questing.

What's not fun is having to share quest drops or items with people in your party, or sitting in virtual queues to kill a named elite or something. Competing with thousands of players for quests at the start won't be fun at all.

•

u/Cassp3 3h ago

Little confused how questing is somehow more on rails than running the same dungeons hundreds of times.

•

u/2atherich 2h ago

As an experience player, it didn't.

•

u/SovietBear666 1h ago

It didn't. I leveled over 10 characters 0-60 or 0-70 in 2019 classic and anniversary without dungeon spamming at all. I boosted for convenience when I got a lucky drop at one point. People are just bad at questing and instead of questing more efficiently or grinding mobs in the open world, they feel like they have to do dungeons. That is completely fixed now because we have an overabundance of quests whereas in classic you could run out of quests.

Boosting has already been elminated in anniversary. I understand blizzard wanting to put people into the world but dungeon spamming is just for lazy people. I'm all for pushing for more players out in the world but it seems like they are trying to solve a problem with a much harsher solution. This is an issue for mob XP in general though.

•

u/Magnificent_Z 4h ago

It contributes to an empty world by taking people away from questing in the overworld to just staying in dungeons until 60. One of the stated goals of Forever is to try and keep the world populated as much as possible

•

u/Tyler1986 3h ago

There aren't enough people who prefer dungeon grinding to make the open world empty ... it's a fake problem

•

u/Magnificent_Z 3h ago

Okay. I was just saying what blizzard said

•

u/The-Only-Razor 2h ago

This argument doesn't work with the existence of mega servers. Layers are dynamically changed to ensure people are playing together in the open world. Spamming dungeons wasn't even an overly popular way to level. This change makes no difference for the fake problem you're outlining.

•

u/Magnificent_Z 2h ago

Blizzard thinks it's a real problem because that's what they said

•

u/Nrgte 30m ago

Yes then Blizzard is gaslighting us and we need to push back.

•

u/Mr-Pants 4h ago

I leveled so many alts on anni servers, didn't dungeon spam, and never felt that the world was empty at any level range.

•

u/Magnificent_Z 3h ago

Okay, I'm just saying what Blizzard said. Idgaf one way or the other I was just answering the question

•

u/Charlotta23 2h ago

shrug. That's what they're doing. Too bad.

•

u/Nessarra 1h ago

typical retail "accept what they give you" mindset

•

u/Football_Dude_420 4h ago

Empty world where I can just do my quests unimpeded? Oh man, that sounds awful!

•

u/kaos95 3h ago

Thank you, there was a point for about a week, that defias were just a myth in westfall. You couldn't do DM quests because there were no mobs to kill.

•

u/NoHetro 3h ago

I mean is the empty world with us in the room right now? seriously we have so many layers because zones are so full and people want the zones to be more full?

•

u/Magnificent_Z 3h ago

The beta isn't real life so trying to extrapolate what live will look like from it is meaningless and also I don't actually care about the dungeon XP nerd, I was just saying what blizzard has said

•

u/AltruisticInstance58 22m ago

Yea, live is going to have like 30x more players.

•

u/zellmerz 4h ago

I think this issue has also been largely overblown. Most people you talk to didn't spam dungeons their entire leveling journey. There were sweats who had their groups and grinding to 60, there were some who grinded dungeons because there weren't enough/many quests in their level range (something all the new quests should fix) and there were lots of players who ran a dungeon 1-5 times as a natural part of their leveling journey.

I personally enjoyed running dungeons with friends when we were all able to get online at the same time and otherwise would largely be questing. Dungeons are one of the best/easiest ways to play with friends and I'm surprised they are making them so unappealing outside of the first run (which is massively overtuned IMO).

•

u/Kind_Reaction_8463 3h ago

exactly. looking forward to blasting dungeons with your friends is like a core part of the game to me.

farming X dungeon to get a fat weapon upgrade would also be very common, but now would just feel awful if you aren't getting exp.

•

u/Magnificent_Z 3h ago

Okay I was just answering the question with what Blizzard said, idgaf one way or the other

•

u/unsaintlyx 4h ago

It contributes to an empty world

No it doesn't, because layering will always lead to a populated open world. Even if 80% of the realm would be in dungeons, the open world would still be packed.

•

u/JCServant 4h ago

That was blizzard's reasoning, IIRC. But, I agree with you... I've always seen enough population in the world in the past, especially in the old days, even when dungeon spamming was a thing. And now? In beta? There's so many people in the world, the heroes outnumber the mobs, and I can't complete some of the quests unless I want to spend near an hour competing for mob tags. No thank you!

•

u/Magnificent_Z 3h ago

Im just saying what blizzard said, idgaf either way

•

u/DankuTwo 4h ago

Have you been around the beta at all? Thanos couldn’t empty this world…..it is so insanely over-crowded.

•

u/Magnificent_Z 3h ago

This isn't about the beta. The beta isn't real life anyway, it's just a testing ground

•

u/Frekavichk 4h ago

Do you think that wowf is going to be so dead that the world will be empty? You have a really ridiculously horrible outlook for the game.

Reminder that we literally only have 4 realms.

•

u/Magnificent_Z 3h ago

I don't have any opinion

•

u/Ashleynn 3h ago

Okay this just keeps getting repeated over and over again. The world was largely dead in Vanilla. The world has always been largely dead. Outside of specific farming, rep grind areas, and large scale events, like pre-AQ or Naxx, the world is dead.

There is no way to keep the world populated. It's an impossible task and attempting it by making dungeons past the first run useless is only going to accomplish pushing people away from the game. They can add incentives to go out into the world but people are only going to go to where those incentives are. So you just have large groups concentrated in those specific areas.

They only have 2 levers to pull to force people into the world. Incentivise it, or penalize those who don't do as they're told. Incentivising can only do so much, and penalizing is only going to alienate, and push players away. Opting for penalizing is an absolutely wild choice since its going to not only not fix the problem in the long run, but also just make people stop playing.

•

u/Magnificent_Z 3h ago

Happy for you or sorry that happened. I don't have an opinion on the subject, I was just saying what blizzard has said

•

u/GreedyBeedy 4h ago

The world is always empty after the initial launch.

Let people play how they have been playing for the last 20 years.

No ine is going to quest with you because they can’t dung grind. People will just quit.

And they certainly wont level alts as much.

•

u/Magnificent_Z 3h ago

Idgaf if people spam dungeons or do whatever, I was just answering the question with what Blizzard said

•

u/Udon_noodles 4h ago

The real answer

•

u/Nac_Lac 3h ago

Two reasons. People have noted that there is a desire to get people in world.

They are not mentioning that Mages and other high level characters would sell boost runs through dungeons. So they would be paid gold to run specific dungeons quickly and repeatedly, either for an item or for the XP. This was the fastest way to level and people would be incentivized to buy gold to facilitate it. No level 10 will have 30g normally to boost through Stockades. Or whatever level range you are talking about.

Trade would be littered with advertisements to boost players through dungeons as ways to make gold and speed them through levels.

Blizzard has stated that their goal is to make the world the main character and not just something to be ignored. So leveling in dungeons is effectively walking away from it.

•

u/Admiralsheep8 3h ago

I mean blizzard said more people in the world and immediate stated that dungeons were part of the world . 

•

u/BarrettRTS 3h ago

Trade would be littered with advertisements to boost players through dungeons as ways to make gold and speed them through levels.

The new system doesn't solve this though. Instead of multiple fast runs for the mob xp, the booster now just full clears with the group so they complete all their quests. It will still be fast and the booster can charge more because 1 run gives around 2 levels of xp from the quest hand ins.

•

u/Nac_Lac 3h ago

Boosters made money because there was a market for players running old dungeons to level up fast.

World Tours are great in theory. But then you look at the reality of quests and remember that the majority are chains that are level locked. A level 15 can't grab quests for SM or RFD, let alone advance them solo.

Booster won't be able to charge more because it was never about 1 run. They would run stockades 5 times an hour for a person or a group. That is effectively dead.

And finally, every player that uses the booster is now a dead client. If you are selling stockade runs, you have a very finite clientele and will often exhaust that very quickly. With the old XP values, you could run 5 an hour, often with the same players. Now, after one run, they are gone and won't be buying from you again.

Trying to organize a tour of dungeons is going to be incredibly tedious and involve a lot of waiting on the part of the booster, making the gold per hour not worth it. They'll earn much, much more just doing 5 runs solo and selling the loot.

•

u/BarrettRTS 3h ago

Funnily I hadn't even considered world tours. I was more thinking about someone holding all the RFC quests, sharing them to the group, then firing out a mage portal to UC at the end of the run. Instead of boosting those players for an hour, they clear RFC in 15 minutes and then charge more, before finding another group to boost.

every player that uses the booster is now a dead client.

Because Forever has achievement rewards (with player power) tied to completing every dungeon and levelling every class to max, they'll be able to boost multiple characters per person.

Maybe there will be fewer boosters overall, but the demand will still be there.

•

u/Nac_Lac 2h ago

Demand will be there but the number of people boosting per dungeon will be lower because there aren't repeat customers in the same day.

Also, not all of the quests can be shared like RFC. Who is going to want to share starter quests then wait hours for that player to be ready? Leaders of the Fang is a great example. That line takes a while to complete on Classic. A booster sharing it does nothing and the player will have to run the dungeon anyways for that.

Again, I see there will be fewer boosters because solo dungeons will net more gold / hour than running others through it.

•

u/BarrettRTS 2h ago

Demand will be there but the number of people boosting per dungeon will be lower because there aren't repeat customers in the same day.

Servers are more condensed and the playerbase will be bigger, with the game encouraging everyone to roll alts.

Who is going to want to share starter quests then wait hours for that player to be ready?

You don't wait for them to be ready, you just invite people that have either done the pre-quest chains or are skipping them because the other 4-5 quests are worth it. It doesn't take too long to get all the Leaders of the Fang pre-quests done for WC, so doing that and then grabbing everything outside of Smart Drinks makes it worthwhile to take an hour dungeon down to a 20 minute dungeon.

Again, I see there will be fewer boosters because solo dungeons will net more gold / hour than running others through it.

There might be fewer boosters relative to the rest of the population, but my point is that boosting is still completely viable. Prices will just go up if other activities have a good gold per hour.

•

u/Nac_Lac 2h ago

I doubt prices will go up to match other activities. The rate of player accrual is low and if people are afraid to swipe, prices can't be raised to match other farms because you'll get zero customers.

If we look at boosting as a way for gold farmers to generate demand for gold buying and add in lower profitability, they won't sell boosts.

•

u/BarrettRTS 1h ago

I guess at this point, time will tell how it plays out.

•

u/darkspy13 3h ago

High level characters should cause you to get 0 exp. That solves boosting.

Why take away from dungeons. They are one of my favorite parts of wow. I don't like questing, I do it to mix things up but I prefer to dungeon grind through certain level ranges. (30-40)

Why add all these new dungeons and then remove my ability to play the game the way I preferred.

Just nerf boosting and let me level using dungeon finder. I'll quest on one of my 7 alts.

•

u/Il_Valentino 2h ago

using dungeon finder

i hope u meant group finder

•

u/darkspy13 1h ago

sure, whatever we are calling the TBC version and not the WOTLK version. Lets just call it LFR for fun

•

u/Il_Valentino 1h ago

ye, group finder is the tbc version. dungeon finder is the ICC patch version.

•

u/darkspy13 1h ago

I see, TIL the name distinction. I do prefer group finder in older versions. Dungeon finder I feel fits the Wotlk vibe better. I think it has to do with the sheer amount of dungeon spam that needs to be done for rep etc.

•

u/Il_Valentino 1h ago

dungeon finder was for me the main reaosn to stop playing as it fully destroyed social aspect of dungeons and i couldnt properly keep groups in line as tank/PL

•

u/Nac_Lac 3h ago

What defines high level? Does your level 50 guildie helping out in SM mean they are high level? Where is the line?

Also, 30-40 has an entirely new zone and new dungeons as well. All we knew about which levels were slogs and problems, is changing.

•

u/darkspy13 2h ago

This mechanic is already in the game... It's 9(?) levels above the mob level. I guess retail doesn't have this mechanic because I'm sure you would know about it.

I played anniversary up until a month ago and if mobs are gray to anyone in the dungeon, your group doesn't get exp. Gray mobs not giving exp was already in the game but they added the nerf to group exp to stop SP boosting.

•

u/Nac_Lac 2h ago

I've not played retail since Cataclysm 15 years ago, but do go off on assuming things.

•

u/darkspy13 2h ago

I was just trying to understand how you didn't know that mobs turn gray and that determines exp. It's a mechanic that has been in the game since vanilla.

I was also expanding on that to say in TBC anniversary, you get exp based on the highest level person in your party. So if you have a 60 in a deadmines group, nobody gets exp. If you have a 30 in a level 24 dungeon, everyone gets green mob crappy exp. This system already exists. I don't know why we had to make it 0 exp on the 2nd run instead of just making this system even more agressive for some reason.

•

u/Nac_Lac 2h ago

Yes, you kill mob that is gray, you get zero XP. That is known.

I was not aware that if someone has the mob gray to them, you get zero XP. I had assumed the XP was severely nerfed but not zero.

There isn't 0 xp on the second run. This is incorrect. You still get some and to say it is nothing is disinformation. It is very low but it is not zero.

•

u/darkspy13 1h ago

Ah, I had read it was none. Yea, it was added fairly late in anniversary I think but that's how it was working while we leveled. I just leveled 1-70 with my friends as a 5 man spamming dungeons. So this change is kind of jarring to me. Granted, we don't have any desire to do that again.. It took forever to sync schedules but not being able to do a dungeon 2-3 times in a row after running there feels bad.

•

u/Il_Valentino 2h ago

mentioning that Mages and other high level characters would sell boost runs

the entire point of boost criticism was that it was harder to find people for regular dungeon runs. in other words it was about being able to group up for dungeons. this nerf does harm this goal in a worse way than boosting.

Blizzard has stated that their goal is to make the world the main character

dungeons ARE PART of the world. the only conclusion should be to travel there by foot and not get teleported by some game system.

•

u/Nac_Lac 1h ago

Right now the majority of players on the beta rush to 20 and are sweats.

When the game actually launches, I am confident that there will be plenty of players to find for dungeons. Everyone is going to be running them once, at minimum. Which means with the leveling curve spread out, you will have a massive population queuing and the idea that you won't find people to run dungeons is absurd.

Blizzard is likely going to see how this change impacts the live game and then adjust as needed.

•

u/Il_Valentino 1h ago

you completely misunderstood what i was saying. the GOAL IS TO GROUP UP AND PLAY DUNGEONS. the nerf PUNISHES this behaviour. so if you come from the "stop boosting" mindset this nerf is the worst possible action you could take. we want players to be social and do social leveling. dungeon spam is absolutely part of that

•

u/Nac_Lac 14m ago

Firmly disagree.

Will I run the same dungeon multiple times to help friends out? Yup.

Did I just waste almost two sessions of play this week to help some random strangers do content I already did in WoW TBC? Also yes.

Running for XP is not the sole reason for dungeons and it's really ignoring a lot of the game to claim otherwise.

•

u/Emmyn13 2h ago

My take on it, at least it makes sense for retail:

Blizzard sells boost to lvl 80(?) On the shop for irl money. The players offering dungeons runs to low level cuts their profit. That simple.

To see dungeon xp be that nerfed in Forever makes me think maybe those will come one day. Not at release of course, but i won't be surprised if they come out in a year or 2.

Personally i like running dungeons and questing, depending on the class i play or if i want to actually be social, or just farm mats and invite one of my friends alt while i do so they get xps. I personally never sold runs because i couldn't be bothered, but powerleveling my bf 8th alt? I did and he did for me. Sometimes you wanna play a class without doing the whole world quess for the 12th time. Change of paces you can say.

Scarlet Monastery, Stratholme and Deadmines were always among my favorites to run and rerun, there's just something about those 3. Especially Stratholme when you're a old wc3 player. (Unreleated but i hope the cot dungeons makes an appearance somehow.)

•

u/marsumane 1h ago

People would sell runs from their high level characters, pull everything, and level the buyers in a fraction of the time

•

u/k1dsmoke 3h ago

It's not a "need" so much as a request from parts of the community, a very loud request, and very often repeated request from the community. A vocal part of the community wants to see players out in the world, questing, leveling and mingling with one another as the "right way" to play the game. They see the dungeon spamming as degenerate.

In Classic, the game has been optimized to hell and back, the "primary" way of leveling was to get into a dungeon group and run the same dungeon over and over again for hours at a time to level. You would be in a group for Scarlet Monastary or Zul'farak for hours at a time running the dungeon until every hit certain level thresholds.

This had a knock on effect of which groups you could reasonably run in. Spell Cleave groups were dominant which would be some mixture of Mages/Locks who could pull and DPS large groups of enemies.

Second to this were melee cleave groups usually consisting of Warriors and an Enhance Shaman, maybe a Hunter.

If you were a single target DPS spec like a Rogue for example you often couldn't get into these groups unless it was a friend group.

This became the META.

Blizzard tried to provide alternate methods in Season of Discovery via the Green Dragon quests/Emerald Dream area, but it was too efficient, provided too much gold, and was nerfed multiple times. It's often cited by large segments of the community as "ruining SoD".

Blizzard has instead dramatically nerfed dungeon XP and pushed it's XP to the dungeon related quests so that it encourages players to run the dungeon at least once, but discourages players from running it repeatedly in order to level up. So players would really only run it multiple times for item drops or fun.

EDIT: There is also the side effect of Dungeon Boosting, which was often using real money to pay for someone (or for gold) to level you by sitting at the dungeon entrance while a mage pulls large segments of the dungeon and slowly AOEing all of the mobs using terrain exploits. This has also been a persistent issue, that Blizzard has tried to address multiple times and a large reason for RMT gold buying.

•

u/xBirdisword 3h ago

Because people are idiots

•

u/TheNahe 2h ago

- People would get boosted in dungeons over and over in multiple level brackets

- People would form groups to spellcleave / melee cleave, often optimizing group compositions to the max, not welcoming certain classes or specs to the groups

- Dungeon spamming is rather boring from a leveling perspective, but since it was such good xp, you'd be incentivized to do it

And all of this means less people in the open world doing quests, interacting, etc. and instead standing in front of dungeon portals and running dungeons back to back

•

u/drossen 4h ago

They want people to be out in the world. During SOD especially almost all leveling was just spamming the same dungeon literally 20+ times then skipping to the next one.

•

u/robmox 1h ago

Um… the other replies are 100% wrong.

“Dungeon cleave” and “spell cleave” were the optimized way to level if you could put together a 5-man group that could commit to the schedule. The main thing that it saves is the need to run from zone to zone on foot. I was in a semi-serious raiding guild during the 2019 launch of Classic and damn near every guild grinded to 60 on launch in a 5-man dungeon cleave. People had /played times of around 2 days? 2.5 days?

What’s worse is dungeon boosting. This was mages pulling the entire dungeon in a single pull and selling carries. If you had the gold, aka bought gold, you could boost a character to 60 in less than 1 day /played. I took a lapse in Classic, and came back from my hiatus, and my old guild leader told me I could join them in BWL that week if I got a Hunter to 60. I bought boosts with my gold and borrowing gold, and got boosted to 60 in like 16 hours played. The last ~5 levels were a 5-box of 4 warriors and a shaman in Eastern Plaguelands.

Having high dungeon exp creates these problems and causes RMT. Dungeon Exp needed to be reduced significantly, and it’s the right thing to do.