World of Warcraft: Forever has added nine new dungeons, but many players reaching the point where group instances become part of the leveling route are choosing to leave them behind. The complaint is not simply that dungeon leveling is slower than it used to be. It is that the combined rewards for organizing and completing a run—experience, gear and money—can feel too small to justify the time required.

That is an awkward outcome for content designed around cooperation. A dungeon is not a quick detour that a single player can begin whenever they please. It can mean finding a compatible party, traveling to the entrance, managing the run itself and, in some cases, returning because a quest objective did not count for every member. If ordinary open-world questing produces better progress with less coordination, players have a clear practical reason to stay outside.

Community discussion has increasingly focused on that mismatch. Players describe receiving experience from dungeon enemies that compares poorly with open-world foes, including reports that a lower-level outdoor enemy can be worth more XP than a dungeon creature nearer to the character’s level. Others have raised concerns that bosses do not feel meaningfully more rewarding than regular enemies. These are player reports rather than a published breakdown of the game’s reward formula, but their consistency points to a broader perception: instances currently offer insufficient value during leveling.

How the dungeon reward model got here

The current frustration follows two substantial adjustments made around Forever’s beta and launch period. At first, dungeon enemy XP was reduced compared with the original Classic-era experience, while XP from dungeon quests was increased. The apparent design goal was understandable: make an instance appealing as a story-and-gear stop once or twice, while preventing players from repeatedly farming the same dungeon as the dominant leveling method.

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In MMO terms, farming means repeating an activity chiefly because its rewards are efficient. Repeated dungeon runs can become a highly optimized leveling route when enemy kills, bosses and resettable encounters deliver XP faster than the wider game. Reducing the payoff from ordinary dungeon enemies is one way to discourage that behavior. Raising quest XP, meanwhile, encourages a player to arrive with relevant objectives, finish them and move onward.

But the first version of the balance reportedly created the opposite problem: dungeon quest XP was so generous that players could advance extremely quickly by prioritizing those quests. A broad reduction to dungeon quest experience then arrived in October. With enemy XP already lower and quest XP subsequently cut, the result described by players is a system where nearly every major source of progression inside an instance is diminished.

That distinction matters. A targeted anti-farming adjustment can leave a dungeon’s first completion attractive. A wider reduction can make even the intended, ordinary run feel like a poor trade. The latter is what the current backlash is about.

Related coverage includes WoW: Forever Dungeon XP Changes Put Group Leveling Under Pressure.

Time cost is part of the reward calculation

XP is not the only thing a player earns in a dungeon, and it is not the only thing they spend. Gear upgrades, money and quest completion all have value. Yet the time cost of group content is substantially different from the time cost of moving through outdoor quests.

Open-world questing lets a player begin immediately, make progress in short sessions and change plans without disrupting four other people. Dungeon play imposes coordination overhead: assembling the party, getting everyone to the location and waiting through the inevitable moments when somebody is delayed, lost or unavailable. There is no indication that Forever lets players bypass that work with a retail-style instant teleport and automated dungeon-group system. Forming a party remains part of the game’s social structure.

That structure can be rewarding in its own right. Players meet others, tackle encounters that cannot be handled alone and share a short self-contained adventure. But it only works when the result feels commensurate with the effort. If a full run takes an hour—or longer—and yields a small amount of XP plus the possibility of a useful item, the calculation can turn against it, especially for anyone principally trying to level.

Reports of quest-focused speed runs show a second-order effect. When a group feels that enemy kills offer little value, its members have an incentive to rush only the quest requirements. That can make dungeon pacing less enjoyable even for players who would rather clear the instance at a more natural pace. The reward system does not merely influence where people level; it can shape how they treat the dungeon when they do enter one.

Repeat objectives make weak XP feel worse

Quest design is another pressure point. Players have specifically highlighted Wailing Caverns, where some objectives can apparently require repeat trips because they cannot be completed by every party member in one pass. Repeating content is a normal part of a persistent online game, but it is easier to accept when every return offers dependable progress through combat rewards, gear chances or both.

When kill XP is perceived as nearly negligible, a second run can feel less like an adventure and more like administrative cleanup for a quest log. That is especially damaging to the proposed “run it once or twice” model. A system built around limited dungeon visits needs to account for the fact that quests do not always resolve neatly on the first visit for an entire group.

It also helps explain why a simple statement such as “dungeons are for quests and gear, not XP” does not fully answer the criticism. Quest completion and gear drops are not guaranteed to land in a tidy, universally satisfying way. Experience is the steady reward that normally acknowledges all of the effort between those endpoints: every pull, boss, wrong turn and return trip. If that steady reward falls too far, the whole loop loses resilience.

Open-world incentives need not exclude group play

There is a sensible aim behind directing players into the open world. Outdoor questing puts characters in zones, routes them through quest chains and creates opportunities for spontaneous interaction. Forever’s layering system, however, has complicated that picture for some players. Layering is a population-management approach that separates players across parallel versions of the same game area. It can help keep a crowded launch zone functional, but it can also make an area feel sparse to someone placed on a quieter layer.

Some players say they are having difficulty finding others because of layering, while others are seeing heavily populated areas such as Mulgore and the Barrens. Those differing experiences suggest that population visibility may vary by location or layer, though the available reports do not establish exactly how the system is behaving. What is clear is the practical concern: if outdoor socializing is meant to replace some dungeon repetition, players need to be able to reliably see and recruit one another.

More importantly, dungeons and outdoor play do not have to be rival philosophies. Finding companions for an instance, traveling together and completing a questline that leads underground are all forms of open-world social play. A healthy balance would discourage endless, reward-maximizing resets without making the group content attached to outdoor stories feel like a bad decision.

For readers tracking the broader reaction, the discussion around Forever’s group-leveling pressure reflects how quickly this issue has become a central concern for dungeon-minded players.

What a fix would need to solve

No announced change is established here, and it remains uncertain whether the current model will be revised. Still, the feedback identifies the balance problem with unusual clarity. Players do not necessarily need dungeons to become the fastest possible way to level on repeat. They need a normal run, with normal coordination and normal questing goals, to feel materially worthwhile.

  • First-run value: A dungeon tied to active quests should offer enough XP and practical reward to compete with simply ignoring it.
  • Repeat-run clarity: When quests require another visit, the return should not feel entirely unrewarded between objectives.
  • Boss significance: Major encounters should feel distinct from ordinary enemy pulls in the overall reward experience.
  • Anti-farming limits: Measures intended to curb repetitive leveling should target repeated optimization without flattening the value of standard group play.
  • Recruitment reality: If outdoor interaction is central to the design, layering should not make finding a party feel inconsistent.

Forever’s dungeon issue is therefore bigger than a spreadsheet dispute over XP numbers. Reward tuning is determining whether nine new instances are treated as welcome stops on a character’s journey or as content to avoid until there is no other reason to enter. Right now, many players appear to be making the second choice—and that is a difficult position for any MMO’s early group content to occupy.