Wowhead retracts its story on the experience curve

Wowhead has retracted its story about the experience curve in WoW Forever. The site wrote that levelling needs far less experience than in Classic. That is not so. Blizzard says the values are unchanged, and the file the data came from is not used by the game.

The original article appeared on 22 September and spread quickly. It claimed that the experience needed per level had been lowered across the board, and that the climb to 60 had become a gradual curve instead of a series of steps.

We can confirm that there are no changes to the experience amounts required to level in WoW Forever.

That line comes from Blainie, who leads the Wowhead news team, in a note added above the article. Blizzard reached out to the site after publication and explained how the game pulls experience values for this version. The datamined numbers sat in a file that the client does not read; a second file, which was not visible to the team, is the one in use.

Wowhead is leaving the article online with the retraction on top, rather than deleting it.

What did change

Dungeon experience is a separate matter and that change is confirmed. Blizzard said at BlizzCon that experience from monsters in dungeons goes down and experience from dungeon quests goes up sharply. New zones and more than 1,000 new quests also add paths to 60 that Classic did not have.

Whether the curve itself is ever touched before launch, Blizzard has not said.