THE WOW FOREVER COLLECTION · DISPATCH · RESEARCH CHECKED NOVEMBER 9, 2026
Short answer: at about 11:05 a.m. PST on Sunday, November 8, Blizzard hotfixed WoW Forever so that mobs inside dungeons give 50% more experience when you kill them. A mob that gave 100 XP on Saturday gives 150 now. That is the whole change. Dungeon quests still pay the reduced bonus from October 1, open-world mobs are untouched, and Blizzard hasn't said how the new numbers compare to Classic Era. Players who have done the math say kills are still well under Era values, and the announcement thread passed 780 posts in about twelve hours.
What Blizzard announced
Community manager Kaivax posted it on the US and EU Forever forums at 19:47 UTC on November 8:
"At about 11:05 PST today, we deployed a hotfix that increased kill experience in dungeons by 50%, so it feels better to go back in for more runs. Happy dungeon crawling, and good luck with those Deviate Hides!"
The Deviate Hides line is a nod to the Wailing Caverns quest Deviate Hides, which asks for 20 Deviate Hide and is the classic example of a quest you finish on your second or third run. It was a server-side hotfix, so there was no patch to download and no restart.
The timing matters. The last time Blizzard spoke at length about dungeon XP, on October 8, Josh "Aggrend" Greenfield wrote that "XP gain is not going to be what it was in era" and that the team needed to "hold firm" on its balance changes. Our October 8 write-up has those quotes in full. A month later, and four days after launch, the team moved anyway.
What changed and what didn't
| Before November 8 | After November 8 | |
|---|---|---|
| XP from killing dungeon mobs | Beta value, already raised about 20% on October 8 | 50% higher than that |
| Dungeon quest bonus XP | Half the extra XP over a normal quest (October 1 change) | Unchanged |
| Open-world mob XP | Same as Era for same-level mobs, lower for green mobs | Unchanged |
| A party member far above the mob's level | Nobody in the group gets XP | Unchanged |
| XP per player in mixed-level groups | Based on your own level (October 8 fix) | Unchanged |
Kaivax's post mentions kill experience in dungeons and nothing else. Output Lag and Warcraft Tavern, which both covered the hotfix on November 8, read it the same way, and neither found any change to dungeon quests. The full hotfix list for the weekend hasn't been posted yet. The last one Blizzard published is from November 6.
Is it back to Classic Era?
No, and Blizzard hasn't claimed it is. The exact size of the original dungeon kill cut has never been published. The developers said during the beta that dungeon mob XP was "way down" from Era and left it there.
That hasn't stopped players working it out. The most repeated figure in the forum threads says Forever dungeon mobs had been giving about 24% of their Era XP, so a 50% raise takes them to about 36%. One post making that case in the announcement thread has 58 likes. Other estimates collected by Output Lag run from about 36% to 45% of Era. Treat all of these as player numbers. They depend on what testers compared and how, and Blizzard hasn't confirmed or corrected any of them.
What players can measure directly is time. Output Lag found a level 32 Warrior tank on r/classicwow who timed a Razorfen Kraul run after the hotfix with no quests: about three and a half bars in just under an hour, which they called "absolutely not worth it". As a reply pointed out, RFK is a level 25 to 30 dungeon, so half its mobs were close to grey for a 32, and green and grey mobs give less XP in Forever. Another player reported about a bar every five minutes in Wailing Caverns. Those two reports are roughly what you would expect: an on-level dungeon is now a decent place to be, and an overleveled one still isn't.
The reaction
The announcement thread is the busiest Forever thread of the weekend: 781 posts, over 53,000 views and more than 1,600 likes by Monday morning, with another 188 posts on the EU copy. The first post alone has 173 likes.
It splits the way the dungeon XP argument always has.
"Thanks, but it's not enough." This is the biggest group. "Restore Dungeons to 100% Of Normal EXP" opened an hour and a half after the hotfix and reached 105 posts. "Exp from dungeons not enough" has 81, and its top reply says Blizzard "just gave 50% of nothing back to us." On the EU forum, one of the most liked replies says that in a run that used to give two bars, "now u get 3 bars", and asks why Blizzard is "taking babysteps".
"Good, and stop there." A smaller but loud group thinks Blizzard gave in. "i knew blizzard would cave" drew 28 likes, and a follow-up from the same player said the change "solved nothing" because people now "know to beg louder". The boosting argument is still running too. The 100% thread opens by calling boosting "not a thing", and the first reply against it says "Boosting IS a thing".
"Now do mob tagging." The third most liked reply in the announcement thread, at 78 likes, asked for shared mob tagging next. That ties straight into the crowded quest zones we wrote about over the weekend in Forever's packed layers. If questing is slow because ten people are waiting on every spawn, a dungeon with its own copy of every mob looks better than it did a week ago, and the XP change makes that trade a little easier.
Blizzard hasn't replied in any of the follow-up threads, and nothing suggests a second raise is planned. The next scheduled change is the class tuning hotfix on Tuesday, November 10, which covers Voidwalkers, Hunter pets, Affliction and Enhancement and doesn't mention XP.
How to use it
The advice from our launch-week healer and tank guide still holds, with one change: a second run of a dungeon is now worth considering instead of being pure loot farming.
Run dungeons at the right level. The 50% applies to kill XP, and kill XP falls off fast once mobs turn green. Go in at or slightly under the dungeon's level and the buff does real work. Go in five levels over and it barely shows.
Still collect the quests first. First-time quest turn-ins are unchanged and remain the biggest XP a dungeon gives. Run with most of the hub's quests in your log, then decide whether a quick second run is worth it for a quest item you missed, a drop, or a group that wants to go again.
Healers and tanks have a better case now. Before the hotfix, the honest advice for a healer was to level as a damage spec and save healing for quest runs until dual spec at level 40. That is still the fastest path, but chain-running an on-level dungeon as a healer is no longer a big XP sacrifice compared with questing in a zone where every mob has a queue.
Keep groups close in level. One player far above the mobs still turns XP off for everyone. That rule hasn't moved.
If you're still picking a class, the tier list has the leveling picture, and the talent calculator has the current trees for planning a leveling spec.
What to watch
Three things. Whether Blizzard posts the weekend hotfix list, which might confirm whether anything else came with the XP change. Whether anyone publishes a careful before-and-after test on the same dungeon pulls, which would settle the 36% versus 45% argument better than forum math. And whether the developers answer the "it's not enough" threads at all. On October 8 the position was to hold firm. On November 8 it moved by half. Nobody outside Blizzard knows whether that is the end of it.
Sources: Kaivax, Blizzard forums, Dungeon Enemy XP Increased - November 8 (November 8, 2026, 19:47 UTC; 781 posts and 53,616 views when checked November 9, 07:30 UTC) and the EU version, Dungeon Enemy XP Increased - 8 November (November 8, 2026; 188 posts when checked November 9); player threads Restore Dungeons to 100% Of Normal EXP (November 8, 2026), Exp from dungeons not enough (November 8, 2026) and Dungeons ONE and DONE (November 8, 2026); Output Lag, WoW: Forever raises dungeon kill XP 50% four days after launch, but quest XP stays cut (November 8, 2026, including the Razorfen Kraul and Wailing Caverns player reports); Warcraft Tavern, Experience from Dungeon Kills Increased in WoW Forever (November 8, 2026); Kaivax, WoW Forever Beta Development Notes (October 1 and October 8, 2026 entries); Josh Greenfield on X, dungeon XP post (October 8, 2026); Kaivax, WoW: Forever Hotfixes - November 6, 2026 (November 7, 2026, 01:07 UTC).