Blizzard explains the missing gold on level 60 quests, and is hotfixing gold onto most quests above level 48
· ForeverDB
Blizzard has confirmed it turned off the old XP-to-Gold conversion for quests handed in at level 60, and says why. Because that hit gold income near max level harder than intended, a hotfix going live within about 24 hours adds gold to most quests of level 48 or higher, including some that never gave gold before.
Players at level 60 noticed that turning in quests gave no gold, and asked about it on the forums. On November 10 Kaivax replied on both the US and EU forums with the same explanation.
Why max-level quests give no gold
Blizzard turned off the XP-to-Gold conversion on purpose. In the original game, once you were level 60 the experience a quest would have given you was paid out as gold instead. Blizzard says that was added in 2006 before The Burning Crusade and left in place in Classic Era in 2019, but it decided to remove it for Forever.
When we evaluated the economy going into WoW: Forever, we made a conscious choice to disable the XP-to-Gold conversion for quests completed at maximum level. This change was originally introduced in 2006 in the weeks leading up the original Burning Crusade launch, and it was intended to provide a boost in gold for players who were wrapping up original WoW content in preparation for the first expansion. Kaivax, Community Manager
The reason for removing it is that the old payout rewarded holding your quests back. Blizzard says it created an incentive to sit on a full quest log and hand everything in after hitting 60 for the biggest gold return, which made grinding mobs and skipping turn-ins the best way to level.
we decided that for WoW: Forever, we would remove the XP to Gold conversion, as it created an incentive for players to hold a full quest log worth of completed quests to hand in after hitting level 60 for maximum gold returns. Under those conditions, the optimal way for players to level to 60 was to simply grind creatures for XP and not hand in quests at all, which is not a design we want to retain in WoW: Forever. Kaivax, Community Manager
The hotfix: gold on most quests of level 48 or higher
Blizzard agrees the change went further than it meant to. It says only about a quarter of quests hand out raw gold on their own, so taking away the conversion pulled down gold income as you get close to 60.
However, in original WoW, only about 25% of quests in the game actually provide raw gold rewards, which led this to be a slightly more negative change than intended to gold income as you get closer to level 60. Kaivax, Community Manager
To fix that, Blizzard is adding gold to most quests with a quest level of 48 or higher, including quests in that range that never gave any gold before. Kaivax said the hotfix should go live within about 24 hours of the post, so roughly by late on November 11.
To address this, we’re preparing a hotfix that will add additional gold rewards to most quests with a quest level of level 48 or higher, including adding gold to quests above level 48 that never previously rewarded gold at all. The idea here is that you should feel good about doing quests at the appropriate level to progress your character, and you should feel adequately rewarded with gold for doing so. The hotfix should be go live in the next 24 hours or so. Thank you for your feedback! Kaivax, Community Manager
In short, quests handed in at level 60 still won't pay out the old experience-as-gold bonus, but questing at the right level on the way to 60 should give you a fair amount of gold again. Wowhead also reported the change.
Quest gold rewards are set on Blizzard's servers, so the exact amounts can't be read from the game files. We'll update if Blizzard posts figures.
Sources
- Gold at 60 for quests (Kaivax, US forums, November 10)
- No gold from quests at lvl 60? Seriously? (Kaivax, EU forums, November 10)
- Wowhead: Blizzard Adding Gold to Many Quests Near Max Level in WoW: Forever