Blizzard Blue Tracker

When we evaluated the economy going into WoW: Forever, we made a conscious choice to disable the XP-to-Gold conversion for quests completed at maximum level. This change was originally introduced in 2006 in the weeks leading up the original Burning Crusade launch, and it was intended to provide a boost in gold for players who were wrapping up original WoW content in preparation for the first expansion.

We left that functionality in place in Classic Era in 2019, but we decided that for WoW: Forever, we would remove the XP to Gold conversion, as it created an incentive for players to hold a full quest log worth of completed quests to hand in after hitting level 60 for maximum gold returns. Under those conditions, the optimal way for players to level to 60 was to simply grind creatures for XP and not hand in quests at all, which is not a design we want to retain in WoW: Forever.

However, in original WoW, only about 25% of quests in the game actually provide raw gold rewards, which led this to be a slightly more negative change than intended to gold income as you get closer to level 60.

To address this, we’re preparing a hotfix that will add additional gold rewards to most quests with a quest level of level 48 or higher, including adding gold to quests above level 48 that never previously rewarded gold at all. The idea here is that you should feel good about doing quests at the appropriate level to progress your character, and you should feel adequately rewarded with gold for doing so.

The hotfix should be go live in the next 24 hours or so. Thank you for your feedback!

We’ve tracked this very carefully, and the hotfix that we deployed on Sunday, November 8 took dungeon kill XP from 40% of the values in Classic Era to 60% of the values in Classic Era. We have subsequently felt that the adjustment is working well to produce dungeon leveling speeds that fit with the rest of WoW Forever content.

Now that players around the world are leveling up in WoW: Forever, we’ve identified a few class issues that we feel need some immediate changes. Today, we’re still investigating these issues and working through them with a plan to release hotfixes on Tuesday, November 10 to address:

• We’ve seen that Hunter pets and Warlock Voidwalkers are not as durable as tanks as we would like them to be. Our intent is for their effectiveness to be relatively the same as in Classic Era. We will adjust their stats as necessary to accomplish this.
• Affliction Warlock reports indicate that always channeling Wrack is superior to also casting damage-over-time abilities like Siphon Life, Corruption, and Bane of Agony. We will make adjustments to make sure those are always worthwhile to cast combined with Wrack, without affecting Affliction Warlocks’ total damage output.
• Enhancement Shamans are finding that Intellect and Spellpower are superior stats compared to Strength and Attack Power. We plan to make changes so that Strength is always their strongest stat, and Enhancement Shamans will not prefer gear intended for Mages and Warlocks. Ideally, Enhancement’s best items have Strength or Attack Power, along with some Intellect and/or Spell Power.

Please note: Enhancement Shaman players who are leveling up will want to collect Strength and Attack Power gear from now on.

We may find new issues over the weekend, and we will keep you updated. Our plan is to make class balance changes on Tuesday, and then on future Tuesdays if necessary. Thank you very much for your feedback!

With the upcoming WoW: Forever update, we wanted to breathe new life into classic world exploration. The new Camping system allows Cooking to become an organic gathering point for groups and travelers alike.

Every profession brings unique utility to the camp: from Blacksmithing sharpening wheels to Alchemical mana wells. We’ll be closely monitoring early leveling feedback in starting zones throughout the PTR phase.