I see people constantly spamming that dungeons were a terrible way to level in Classic19 and all the fast levelers did quests..
Here's <APES> the world first guild to clear Molten Core in Classic19 spamming dungeons to level. Don't let people gaslight you into believing dungeon spamming was horrible.
What exactly are you trying to prove by showing a hyper-optimized, min-maxed example of dungeon leveling? Most players have jobs, families, and maybe 2 hours a day to play.
Compare that to a realistic scenario: someone comes home from work, logs in, spends time looking for a dungeon group or messaging friends to see who's available. If nobody's around, they have to form a group themselves, travel to the dungeon, and maybe get 1–2 runs in before calling it a night.
That's the reality for most players, not some perfectly coordinated group grinding dungeons for 6 hours straight. That's why dungeon leveling should be a viable alternative to questing, not something that only makes sense when you're min-maxing every minute.
Feels like they are comparing the most sweaty dungeon spam with the most casual brain rot questing and trying to make sure even the .let incompetent player questing will gain massively more then the most organized dungeon group
Streamers so even less than the 1% of the population great just like these guilds that have been playing in private servers for years. What is your point ?
You're saying that streamers are irrelevant but then also claiming everyone watches streamers, looks up guides and thus knows how to play perfectly optimized. So which is it?
You're confusing two completely different arguments lol. I never said everyone watches streamers or plays perfectly optimized.
I'm saying optimized questing guides are widely accessible to average players. That doesn't mean everyone uses them or executes them perfectly.
And streamers aren't irrelevant. Their highly optimized dungeon runs just aren't representative of the average player forming a group after work.
Following a leveling addon solo and coordinating four other players for efficient dungeon grinding are two very different things. How is that so hard to understand?
If World's first 60 is proof that questing is far beyond better than dungeon spamming, then Blizzard balancing dungeon exp/h around perfect cleave comps if totally fine. Or does using the top 1% of players only valid when it works in your favor and not against you?
I agree but that then leaves us with the dilemma of what to do about the dungeon spam meta that became prominent the last 3 times we had a classic launch. Certain level ranges, especially 28-40 and 48-60 have dungeons so efficient and mob packed that you genuinely were hampering yourself by questing. The quest rewards are weak, the zones are spread out and vast, while SM and BRD are packed with good gear and require no travel at all.
Blizzard added more quest to zones sure but unless those zones are filled with quests that give crazy gear and take no time or effort to complete, it's still not incentive enough push people away from dungeon spamming. Why would someone bother doing Searing Gorge, Burning Steppes, Winterspring, etc when BRD was giving comparble exp but also dropping gear that is pre-raid BiS for a ton of classes? Should blizz nerf that gear? Well now what's the point of even doing the dungeon, the rewards are trash. So they nerfed the only thing they could without ruining the dungeon entirely.
Because they were 10 levels above the rest of the playerbase and had whole zones to themselves. That argument goes out the window when you have to compete with dozens of people fighting for tags on the same mobs you are or looting the items from underneath you while you're the sucker stuck with the mob on you.
Where did i say they were dungeon spamming. I'm saying your argument that they're proof that questing is faster is completely inaccurate because the overwhelming majority of the playerbase has never and will never be able to quest and aoe farm zones like wetlands without there being dozens of players there. How are you so confused about that?
Up vote because its true that why questing is the best method for everyone in general and always has been.
But in my opinion its about what is funner for that person to progress what if that person does not have fun grinding quests :/ then he wont want to play the game he lost a choice on how to enjoy a game.
What exactly are you trying to prove by showing a hyper-optimized, min-maxed example of dungeon leveling?
The same thing that people who claim questing is faster while pointing to the World's first 60 speedrunners as their proof. Why is perfect, optimal gameplay only valid proof when used as evidence in your favor and not against you?
Questing is already hyper-optimized and always has been. The difference is that hyper-optimized dungeon leveling requires very specific circumstances, a coordinated group, and extensive game knowledge.
Meanwhile, anyone can download RestedXP for an optimized leveling route or Zygor for an even more automated, braindead questing experience. These guides are literally created by speed levelers who spend countless hours optimizing routes so the average player can follow them without having to figure anything out. Even Having Questie the add on makes it so you don't have to read text.
That's the difference. Questing optimization is accessible to pretty much everyone, while dungeon optimization requires far more coordination, preparation, and specific circumstances. Comparing a perfectly optimized dungeon group to an average player questing makes no sense.
Questing is already hyper-optimized and always has been.
That's fucking hilarious. You think the average leveler has "always" had the perfect quest route with the perfect zero competition server? Are you insane? Dungeon leveling is so, so much easier to optimize than questing.
Sorry if I gave you the wrong impression. I meant from a game design standpoint. Questing is designed with progression routes in mind. Developers don't just randomly scatter quests around the world wherever they feel like it. Quest hubs, level ranges, and zone progression are intentionally designed to guide players through the world.
I'm not saying the average player has always followed a perfectly optimized route with zero competition lol. I'm saying questing has an underlying structure designed around progression, which players and guide creators have optimized even further over the years.
Look how they optimized questing even more by adding more quests in olds zones.
And again, clearing a dungeon efficiently isn't the same as consistently optimizing dungeon XP/hour when you factor in group formation, travel, and downtime.
Questing is already hyper-optimized and always has been.
That's under the assumption there's no one else interfering with your tags and there's no travel time, neither of which are an issue in dungeons. Questing is faster goes right out the window when you're suddenly account for dozens of other players doing the exact same thing as you.
Questing is already designed to be optimized from start to finish. That's why there are multiple leveling routes, and addons like RestedXP and Zygor take things like travel time, mob competition, and overcrowded zones into account. Sometimes they'll even have you skip quests entirely because the competition makes them inefficient. Not to mention you can swap zones in the guides etc.
Dungeon leveling is inherently a social activity, which introduces far more variables than solo questing. You have to find a group, get everyone together, travel to the dungeon, and hope nobody leaves or needs replacing. Any of those things can turn into massive time losses. A perfectly coordinated dungeon group is the exception, not the average experience.
You're comparing ideal dungeon conditions against imperfect questing conditions. Why not compare both under realistic circumstances?
And that's exactly why dungeon XP should be viable. Grouping up already requires more coordination, time, and effort. Players shouldn't be punished for choosing to play socially. Nobody is arguing that dungeons need to be the fastest leveling method, just that they should be a meaningful alternative that respects players' time.
Questing is already designed to be optimized from start to finish. That's why there are multiple leveling routes, and addons like RestedXP and Zygor take things like travel time, mob competition, and overcrowded zones into account. Sometimes they'll even have you skip quests entirely because the competition makes them inefficient. Not to mention you can swap zones in the guides etc.
There's no way your argument is that every player is using RXP and thus is perfectly optimal while being upset blizzard is balancing dungeon exp/h around optimal cleave comps. Notice the irony there?
Grouping up already requires more coordination, time, and effort.
Doing the same dungeon 20 times, with no external interference and no need to travel is the exact opposite of requiring effort. It's the most brain off activity you can do, dungeons aren't difficult lmao. No one is CC'ing, you're pulling multiple packs at a time, stop acting like we're in 2003 and dont know how to play yet.
Do you seriously think a large portion of the playerbase isn't using leveling addons? Whether it's RestedXP, Zygor, or even free addons like Questie, these tools are everywhere.
Just look at YouTube. Content creators constantly promote leveling guides, addon tier lists, tutorials, and videos like "Best Addons for WoW Forever." Some are literally making money promoting these tools. New players looking up how to level or get started are constantly being exposed to them.
I'm not saying everyone plays perfectly optimally. I'm saying optimized questing is incredibly accessible to the average player. You download an addon and follow the instructions. You can't download an addon that magically gives you four coordinated players with matching schedules and zero downtime.
Where's the irony? You're comparing the accessibility of optimized solo questing to the performance of an ideal dungeon group. Those aren't remotely the same circumstances.
And again, nobody is asking for dungeon leveling to be superior to questing. Just viable.
Do you seriously think a large portion of the playerbase isn't using leveling addons? Whether it's RestedXP, Zygor, or even free addons like Questie, these tools are everywhere.
This is exactly why this reddit is nothing but an echo chamber and categorically not a representation of the overall playerbase. No, the majority of players aren't using optimized guides and they aren't watching streamers to learn what optimized gameplay is.
So nobody researches leveling guides on YouTube? Nobody looks up the best addons, leveling routes, class guides, or tier lists? Damn, I must be playing some casual-ass game and not World of Warcraft lol.
You can literally see the download numbers for addons like Questie (209,534,428) Restedxp (27,815,962) on CurseForge. Obviously downloads don't equal unique players, but acting like leveling addons and guides are some niche thing only sweaty Redditors use is ridiculous.
I'm not saying everyone plays perfectly optimally. I'm saying optimized questing is incredibly accessible to the average player.
And the irony is that you're claiming the average player doesn't optimize questing while defending dungeon XP nerfs based on what highly coordinated dungeon groups can achieve. So are we balancing around average players or min-maxers?
Yes 100% a large fraction of the player base uses these add ons. Now if you are talking Fojji levels that is a diffrent story lol
Acting like Questie is a hyper optimized guide is actually laughable. It just shows you quests on the map, not when to do them, how to do them and in what order.
So are we balancing around average players or min-maxers?
You tell me, cause for quest exp/h you are claiming everyone is playing like optimized 1% speedrunners but claim no dungeon group is ever perfect cleave comps. How is it that the same players are simultenously perfectly optimized but the second they step into a dungeon group, they're the opposite lmao?
"Questing is already hyper-optimized and always has been."
A very specific scenario where your on a dead server or you got ahead while playing 24/7. GL being hyper optimized when your getting ganked non stop in STV.
"The difference is that hyper-optimized dungeon leveling requires very specific circumstances, a coordinated group, and extensive game knowledge."
They aren't running a hyper optimized group... It doesn't require extensive game knowledge to do a Vanilla WoW level 30 dungeon fast...
Now we're using PvP servers and getting ganked nonstop in STV as the argument? Lol. That's a very specific scenario too, and not everyone plays on a PvP server. You're taking one of the worst possible questing scenarios and comparing it to ideal dungeon conditions.
And yes, running a dungeon is easy. It's a level 30 dungeon in a 20-year-old game, not rocket science. Neither is doing fetch quests or killing 10 boars. What even is this argument? Lol. The difficulty of the content isn't the point. We're talking about optimizing XP/hour, not whether someone knows how to clear a dungeon.
You still need a consistent group, minimal downtime, efficient pulls, and people who can keep running without interruptions. That's a lot more coordination than downloading RestedXP and following an optimized questing route.
My argument has never been that dungeons should be faster than questing. It's that dungeon grinding should be a viable alternative. Why should playing with other people be significantly less rewarding than following an addon solo?
There’s truth to this comment but the same applies to when people are saying that solo question was faster than dungeons and then proceed to point out at Joana or Jokerd who where both professional levelers with a planned optimal route
You are describing a situation 2 months after launch, when you may actually need some time to make a group.
It took over a month for me to level to 60 on som, not even playing daily, it was about 5.7-6.3 days played(logging out at inns for rested XP helped a lot).
I hop in, 5 mins later I'm in a group, 2 hours and 6-10 IDs later I'm getting ready to sleep.
Next day, I hit up the better players I've met in my groups to see if they want to run, rinse and repeat till time to look at pre is.
Seriously, it’s getting so old by now. The vast majority of the player base are older, employed people with lives to attend. If they cater a niche version of WoW to the diehard sweats, the game will die as quick as SoD did.
If you only have 2 hours to play you were even more incentivized to just run a couple dungeons because it legitimately was better xp than getting 3 quests done in that time.
If it takes 2 hours for you to complete 3 quests being carried in a dungeon will always be faster for you. That’s not because dungeons are good xp it’s just that you would have to be afk for 90 minutes to take 2 hours for 3 quests.
You obviously didn’t quest in og vanilla. When there’s 2 quests in one zone that take you across the continent to another quest across the continent to another zone, it will take you 2 hours to do 3 quests. Atleast in forever they padded out the zones that were lacking in quests.
This kind of player won't be affected at all by the change. They go get their quests, do their 1 dungeon, then log off. Repeat for the next dungeon and add some questing in between so they can do the quest prereqs.
So you think sitting in STV corpse running in between each mob kill is faster then spamming dungeons? All because you're a "casual"? TIL casuals can't do dungeons.
"If nobody's around"... Yeah nobody is going to be around on a mega server for a brand new WoW launch...
Classic was 100% dominated by dungeon boosting when they launched it. I am fine with them gutting that and bringjng it as close to parity with efficient questing as possible.
You don’t get xp from kills when you have a much higher level player in your party so not sure where you’re getting that from. Boosting has been dead for a while now
Umm, I think the argument is people weren't dungeon spamming in Vanilla, not Classic. Of course people dungeon spammed during Classic, people's attitude in 2019 is not much different than in 2026. Even in Vanilla there were dungeon spamming, but I don't think it was anywhere near 2019 levels.
The average player became much better and groups became much more efficient in how much exp/h they managed in dungeons, so Blizzard nerfed dungeon exp because vanilla dungeons were never balanced around those kinds of clear speeds.
If you want "no changes", that type of server already exist.
APES was on a sweaty as fuck EU server and we’re the most famous guild on the server. All horde targeted them so I genuinely think it was faster in dungeons just because of their reputation and stacked 5 mans. Classic on a PvP server at launch was a fucking shit show once you hit STV and were outnumbered by the other faction
Just like the "questing is faster" people think everyone is a world's first 60 speedrunner. Odd how top 1% of player is only valid proof when it's in favor of your claim and not against it.
the speedrunners are a different breed. but many of the people who hit 60 fast 100% sat in ZF for 10 level aoe'ing zombies and scarabs in a 10 man group, atleast if you were a pali/caster/healer.
Obviously, but OP decided to cherry pick aswell.
APES running dungeons is far from beeing an argument against dungeon experience.
I dont understand people aginst dungeon xp at all anyway. It has absolutely zero effect on their own game if they revert the xp changes at least I didnt see a single argument so far.
Yup APES is not a good guild to compare to anything in the game. Everyone except hunter’s were required to go gnome or dwarf. Maitoz is an absolutely insane guild leader. There run to molten Core Video is nuts in terms of coordination and Maitoz calls for light of elune at the perfect time with every player hitting it at the same time. Very few if any guilds are even close to APES
Meanwhile I constantly see this all over the sub, but I'm helpless. "Dungeon spamming wasn't the fastest way to level" "Dungeon spamming is not speed leveling" "There's no record holders spamming dungeons" "Nobody spammed dungeons in Classic" "People just did dungeons because it was fun".
basically every one of these is a straw man that ignores the fact that in the experience of the overwhelming majority of players, the statements are actually true.
Nearly everyone who cares about this issue would be happy to have targeted solutions to discourage spam. It's the collateral damage to normal, healthy play that they're complaining about. Those solutions are not hard to come up with if you give it even a tiny bit of thought rather than spiking the ball in people's face to celebrate them losing something they enjoyed.
So, this doesn't really prove that dungeons are the fastest way to level, it just proves that for this comp specifically, dungeons were more efficient.
Which makes sense for the very gear reliant warriors they needed. But you never put any thought into this post anyways.
Yeah 2 warriors, mage, and warlock is such an amazing dungeon leveling comp to speed run to 60. If you put a hunter or a rogue in there then they would be leveling so much slower /s
I don't think anyone believed that people didn't. but it was definitely the minority and it was definitely not the issue people are making it out to be.
the argument is being blown out of proportions by people on both sides of the argument
It wasn't at first, but it became a problem later for all alts. Anytime you logged in was people spamming chat for the services they selling. And people spamming asking for it.
It was however a small group of players who did it, and to my knowledge it was almost only for the release
Are you gonna balance a game that is suppose to last "Forever" around what a few people do at launch? If this is their balancing philosophy, then the game is screwed
You seem to be as bad at interpreting data as the devs, crazy.
Not everyone is in a hyper optimized dungeon group, yet RestedXP exists as an addon and puts a huge % of the player base (including the devs) on the same optimized route.
OP: "Yes we're ignoring the fact they have 2 warriors and a mage for AoE (+ lock hellfire), while pulling 5+ packs at a time because this is how every dungeon group looks"
Nothing will convince me that the people who care this much about how others play the game aren’t some form of religious zealot or bigots irl. There’s no way a normal grown adult could care this much about how people level
yup and it will have the added affect of helping curb gold buying/selling as you had a lot of people in classic buying gold to power level through dungeon running and then the mage doing the dungeon run would go in turn and sell that gold.
People all over this sub. They think just because jokerd hit world first 60 and a hunter sped level to 60 doing quests... They think that means dungeon spamming is terrible.
If youre not ahead of/behind the curve youre in the pile fighting for tags and waiting. Even those players come SM stayed for multiple levels you were either spell cleave or melee cleave 30-40+
I haven't seen a single person complaining about spam actually propose a solution that targets it.
Years ago, people would exploit dungeon resets to farm herbs, chests, and specific loot. How did blizzard address it? By capping resets. They could have just taken all herbs out of dungeons and made the rewards so shitty that the reset farmers would be balanced again. But that would be stupid to unnecessarily take all legitimate players down with it.
Not only were they a speed leveling guild, but they were a speed leveling guild from private servers who practiced doing it specifically for 2019. When people says people didn't spam dungeons in classic they mean back in 2004.
I don’t know why you people are dying on the “dungeon spamming bad” hill. Are you all still salty about getting kicked from a dungeon or something? I just don’t understand how if people level that way it effects you at all.
I see people constantly spamming that dungeons were a terrible way to level in Classic19 and all the fast levelers did quests..
Yeah.
JokerD - World first - grinded mobs solo.
Bunch of other mages and ahmpy questing/grinding mobs outdoors - solo.
Me skimming through whispers and waiting 40 minutes for them to come then go afk to walk their dog for another 10? Then have them press 2 buttons every 6 seconds doing less dps than the tank spamming demo shout? Definitely didn't level as fast as them.
Dungeons are definitely terrible for your non-5 stack optimized premades. Even less so now.
Well dungeons were also bugged at Classic launch and gave full XP even if you were in a raid group. But yes, even after that nerf dungeon leveling with an optimized group of sweats was notably faster than questing.
Anyone mind explaining to me the reasoning players would want the dungeon xp nerfs?
Who cares if it’s slightly faster if you’re in an optimized group? It really isn’t game breaking.
Nerfing this goes against the spirit of classic, most classic players talk about. If it’s not a race to 60, then who cares? Go at your own pace and enjoy your leveling experience. Good news is you don’t have to spam dungeons!
Let’s be real, there is absolutely nothing difficult about classic leveling. It is tedious. Nerfing dungeon xp is just adding more tedious work that anyone can do.
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u/lanter624 1h ago
What exactly are you trying to prove by showing a hyper-optimized, min-maxed example of dungeon leveling? Most players have jobs, families, and maybe 2 hours a day to play.
Compare that to a realistic scenario: someone comes home from work, logs in, spends time looking for a dungeon group or messaging friends to see who's available. If nobody's around, they have to form a group themselves, travel to the dungeon, and maybe get 1–2 runs in before calling it a night.
That's the reality for most players, not some perfectly coordinated group grinding dungeons for 6 hours straight. That's why dungeon leveling should be a viable alternative to questing, not something that only makes sense when you're min-maxing every minute.