Does anyone understand how party experience works in classic when there is a large level difference between members?

I’m attempting to power level an alt through dungeons and can’t figure out how the experience is being calculated. Here are a few examples of the experience a level 14 character will gain from having a level 60 kill a level 14 elite in a dungeon:

Group: lvl 60, lvl 14 – 27 exp
Group: lvl 60, lvl 14, lvl 12 – 41 exp
Group: lvl 60, lvl 14, lvl 12, lvl 14 – 43 exp
Group: lvl 60, lvl 14, lvl 12, lvl 14, lvl 16 – 37 exp

The biggest difference comes from adding a 3rd party member to the group which increases the exp gained by ~50%. The wowiki mob exp formulas definitely doesn’t seem to hold in classic. In particular, having a 1.17 multiplier to total mob exp for a 3 person group vs 2 person group can’t explain the massive gain in exp observed.

Does anyone recall this behavior in vanilla and have an explanation? Is this a bug?

The following is after very limited testing. The formulae here are best guess.

Assuming everyone in the group is the same level

XP = MXP/numberOfMembers * modifier.

Modifiers:

1 person group = 1.0 2 person group = 1.0 3 person group = 1.166 4 person group = 1.3 5 person group = 1.4

Example:

1 person = 100xp 2 people = 50xp each. 3 people = ~39xp each. 4 people = ~33xp each. 5 people = ~28xp each.

Raid-sized groups dramatically decrease experience gained.

That is indeed the wowiki explanation I was referring to which doesn’t apply here. Based on additional testing, level weighted exp splitting against the group average level also doesn’t seem to be the case. There seems to be something more complicated under the hood causing a huge boost in experience when going from 2 to 3 party members.

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It wouldn’t surprise me if the designed the algorithms to punish people who are assumed to be getting carried by a higher level.

No matter how you break it down, it’s a lose lose situation for players. If you solo these, you’ll be working really hard, because a lot of non-elite quests are designed to be too hard to be soloed at level. But if you group there is a steep penalty.

You end up having played a lot longer no matter what, which is kind of what people hated so much about BfA: everything is designed to force you to play longer for no more reward or even less in this case.

All truth idk what they are using. I had a guildy ask me to run his lv 19 pally threw deadmines so he could finish the quests. Im lv 60 and we were ready for him to get nothing or next to no exp. A full deadmines run and he still got almost a full bar of exp in there (from start of lv to end of lv). So the higher lv dragging a lower penalty just does not seem to be as strong as it use to be to me.

I’m also experiencing this while running my level 15 alt through deadmines. My XP was nothing compared to another 15 I had that got a run from a 60 with a full group. I was considering adding a third to the group to text but googled it first and found this thread. I guess ill add the third…