Dungeon XP Nerfs Created a Toxic Meta

[u/redlow0992]

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.

[u/McSwoopyarms]

It's a horrible design choice and I hate the fact that some bozo's decision at some developer roundtable at Blizz HQ affects my enjoyment of the game so much.

There's literally zero incentive to re-run an instance now, period. Didn't get the item you were chasing, like the full Armor of the Fang set on your druid? Well, you can run it again and get absolutely zero benefit from it, other than another chance at a drop. Didn't drop or someone else won the roll? Tough luck, you just wasted an hour and gained absolutely nothing.

And why? Because "Blizzard wants people in the overworld". Well for starters, dungeon quests give such insane XP atm that you can still skip a large portion of the outdoor quests. But I also feel that Blizzard dictating how people should play their game goes very much against the spirit of Classic (my idea of it, anyway).

If they want to counter the "dungeon farming powerleveling" meta or the booster meta, there are better ways to achieve that. Disable all party XP when the mob is grey for any party member. Do a stacking -% XP debuff for every instance ID you enter that day. Plenty of good suggestions to go about. Just don't use this "run each dungeon once and skip as much as possible while you're at it" approach, for the love of God.

[u/MrGOOGIE → u/McSwoopyarms]

I did one rfc run followed by one rol run. It brought me from 14 to 19. I’ve never skipped so much barrens quest in my wow vanilla and classic career. Heck the forgotten pool quest was grey after that. I don’t think I’ve ever NOT done that quest before.

[u/Juised → u/McSwoopyarms]

I know this might be unpopular, but you know you're allowed to do things that aren't completely optimal, right?

In your post, you say that there is "zero incentive to re-run an instance", but then in literally the next sentence you provide a very valid incentive to do just that, namely assembling the full Armor of the Fang set for your druid.

Yes, you would level faster if you just left WC and did the next dungeon, or some quests in the world or something, but going back and doing the dungeon again, assembling the set, turning into a cool snake, and then being more powerful when you do leave WC to do that other content, is a very real incentive.

You can still run the dungeon multiple times, you will still get (albeit very little) experience, you can still take a break from rushing through leveling as fast as possible to make your character stronger. And you get so much xp from the quests now, that after running the dungeon 3-4 times, and turning in the quests, you'd still be at pretty much the same xp point that you would have been at had you done the quests and run the dungeon the same number of times before. The difference is just that it feels worse, since the xp comes in one big chunk, versus before it would have been gradually accumulated over the individual runs.

Its certainly worse total xp if you run it like 5-6 times because you really want to complete the set, I will give you that. 

[u/Juised → u/Juised]

Just did some rough math to try to make sure I'm not just making up stuff.

For horde in WC, the full set of quests gives 37410 exp in forever vs 12550 on era. 

Assuming we're doing clearing most of the dungeon, ~120 mobs, on era thats ~100 exp per kill for a lvl 17, so about 12k total kill xp from the dungeon.

On forever, that same clear would only give somewhere between 2700-3300. 

That deficit is huge, and so the break even point is around 4 runs.

So if you were to run WC 4 times, even with the reduced kill xp, you would still be at the same leveling point as if you had run it that many times before blizzard's xp changes. 

You might possibly be even ahead, since if you were running it back to back, you would save the quest turning xp jump to the end, therefore you'd be a lower level relative to the mobs, and gain more xp per kill.

Also, if youre not full clearing, and just killing specific bosses for loot after doing 1 full quest run, that reduces the xp delta vs the old version, so you can do even more runs before "falling behind" in xp from the old system.

[u/McSwoopyarms → u/Juised]

I get what you are saying. To me however, how the current system performs compared to the old system in terms of numbers isn't that relevant: it's all about perception.

In the old system, if I don't get a drop, I'd at least have gotten a significant amount of XP. In addition to that, my party might be up for more runs. I might stumble upon a nice group of people and do a couple of runs in succession before calling it a day.

In the new system, if I don't get a drop, the rewards would be minimal. Barely any XP, a bit of junk/mats, maybe some greens. My group would most likely disband after the initial run (since additional runs are so discouraged), so I'd have to painstakingly find a new group again.

Even if the XP/hour is better than the old system, the perception is worse in the new system. I'd still feel like I wasted a couple of hours for barely any reward. And that doesn't even address the (lowkey toxic) skip meta in the new system.

I don't care about speed leveling, or making it to endgame even. What I enjoyed most about Classic was how I could alternate between having a nice solo questing session one evening and finding a group to run a couple of dungeons with the next. This new meta disrupts both the solo questing aspect (the level jumps caused by the massive dungeon quest XP awkwardly disrupt the natural flow of questing areas) and the dungeon running aspect (the toxic skip meta mentioned before).