HAPPY ENDING EDIT! Thank you Mystrael for pointing this out!
Welp, it turns out I may be quite wrong about follower dungeons, and I’m willing to take the blame for just… reading something where it wasn’t said.
But man… if Follower dungeons really are not made with leveling in mind, as PTR XP levels currently indicate… what a lost opportunity. What a boneheded move when other games are RIGHT THERE giving an out from the interdependence of leveling dungeons with randos, and as a perfectly viable leveling option that harms no one except the toxic “you should need the community (meaning: me) to progress” impulse that festers in the darkest hearts in MMORPGs could vouch for.
What am I talking about? Before a post that I’ll link at the bottom of this post, I recently returned to the PTR after some savvy folks wisened me up to the steep XP nerf to follower dungeons on the current PTR. Like it’s completely off the table as a leveling path as of the current build, it’s that bad.
I will absolutely admit that WoW has never said that follower dungeons were meant for leveling. That’s me filling in what I felt were pretty intuitive blanks, but blanks they were.
So if you’re interested in this, in follower dungeons as a reasonable (but not insane like 10-60 LFD in classic dungeon queue) path to level classes, keep an eye on the discourse about Follower Dungeon XP levels tomorrow, because if my casual searches are any indication… getting two digit XP for trash pulls and even some bosses in follower dungeons is going to hit a lot of people in the gut if it goes live… which it may not! It might just be a PTR thing, and busted on PTR like a lot of things right now!
Or you can use this thread to laugh at my sorrow. It’s all bumps.
I mean, were they really blanks? Blizzard billed it as a place to experience the dungeon for the first time without the mess of dealing with people who have already run it 39 times. A place to learn the mechanics before jumping into content with actual players. A place to get normal level gear in peace.
I don’t see them excluding leveling from that as a “blank”. It’s just that’s it’s not the intended purpose.
And, yeah, the whole cap thing, but that’s a recent development. Not sure how much that actually matters though. Are players averse to group content really planning on putting in more than like 3.5 hours of dungeoning per day? Because at the pace these things go that’s what we’re looking at before the cap.
A temporary cap, that I was fully ready to work around as I just cycle alts, as rested, on the rare occasion that I hit 10 in a day, which wouldn’t be often for me personally.
Oh I know, but still, I’d rarely hit 10 in a day on weekdays. I was just mentioning the rest XP cycle as an unrelated part of my method. But you are correct, I couldn’t get around the cap that way.
I hope that’s just some weird PTR setting, because I will also be disappointed if this isn’t an option for leveling alts. I have no intention of doing more than 10 in a day, but I would like there to be effective XP gains.
I’d tolerate a pretty steep hit to overall efficiency to play a healer with bots, but 5k XP per dungeon when level 61 is 214 k is too steep even for me!
Thanks for posting about this in GD, since the other thread (regarding the 10 instance limit) is a bit unfriendly at the moment, and it’s good to get more eyes on this.
I, too, filled in some blanks (apparently), and made the same intuitive leap that running normal dungeons as follower dungeons would provide the same xp from killing mobs and bosses as running them with other players (without the xp bonus for completing the dungeon, which I didn’t expect). This was reinforced by the fact that when the PTR went live, that was absolutely the case.
Now, suddenly, the xp has been nerfed by what? 80%? It’s ridiculous. What is this feature even for, if not to provide folks who aren’t fond of the rush rush rush playstyle and toxic groups a way to play the dungeons solo, at their own pace? It’s normal dungeons, that people do when leveling. Why doesn’t it provide appropriate xp?
You can get more xp doing one pet battle than you can in a follower dungeon as it is on the PTR now. Think about that: pet battles take no time, and require no player combat, yet will reward more xp than an entire follower dungeon. It’s ludicrous.
If this feature goes live as it is on the PTR right now, it will be the single biggest disappointment I’ve ever had in this game. I hope it doesn’t go live like this tomorrow, but I think it’s a pretty thin slice of hope, really.
LMAO…so the follower dungeons are about learning to play the game. Learning to play your class, and theyre limited to 10 per day?
this sounds like the jokers who tell gun owners they dont shoot well enough to carry a gun…but then want to limit the amount of ammo we can buy literally keeping us from being able to train.
only Ion and crew can think this crap up.
Yet ANOTHER feature Ive been dying to mess with that Im already losing interest in and its not even live yet
LFD still gives the bonus XP and gold at the end of the dungeon run, plus you’ll probably be able to clear the dungeons faster with groups of real people.
Unless the players currently running LFD are only doing it because they don’t have a choice, I can’t see why they’d jump to follower dungeons.
Also, the players who don’t currently run LFD but were still looking forward to follower dungeons still probably won’t run LFD. I don’t really see it taking away from LFD to the extent that XP needed to be nerfed as a discouragement.
It was a pretty reasonable blank to fill in. People currently run normal dungeons to level in, so it’s not far fetched at all to assume this feature billed as normal dungeons but with followers would be any different (outside of not having the rewards you normally get at the end of LFD runs).
I personally will probably only run them for mogs with level 70s anyway, so I’m not stressing leveling alts through them for XP, but that is a bummer for people who were hoping to do so. I usually just wait for timewalking dungeons to level alts that I don’t mind skipping campaign quests…but that’s just me. I enjoy leveling and questing, always have, so usually don’t use dungeons to level anyway. Only speak for myself though.
