In WoW: The War Within you are powerful when you are not leveling – it was such a problem that Blizzard has now removed the XP cap so you level up by default.
The launch of a new expansion of World of Warcraft is always a reason for joy, as there are plenty of new things to discover. However, one downside is that well-equipped characters become weaker during leveling – a side effect of scaling in the game. With “The War Within”, it was so severe that Blizzard had to intervene and actively prevented you from not leveling.
What is the problem? If you played a lot at the end of Dragonflight in season 4, then your character is extremely powerful. You can especially feel this during the first few level-ups in the new expansion. Enemies can regularly die from “one-hits” and the quests are absolutely no challenge. Between levels 70 and 75, most quest rewards are even significantly worse than anything you collected at the end of Dragonflight.
This leads to your character being disproportionately strong when they arrive in Khaz Algar. Dungeons, depths, quest enemies – everything virtually melts under the power of well-equipped characters.
The culprit is the extremely good gear from Dragonflight. This gear passively becomes weaker while leveling since the character needs more of a stat with each level-up to achieve the same benefits as before.
An example (with simplified, fictional numbers):
- At level 70, you need 100 critical strike rating to get 1% Crit.
- At level 80, you need 200 critical strike rating to get 1% Crit.
How did people exploit this? Some clever individuals have noticed how overpowered they are in Khaz Algar when their character remains perpetually at level 70. They activated the XP stop and then farmed various content to gain resources and other benefits without their character becoming weaker.
Especially the depths (“Delves”) were a target for anyone wanting to exploit this strength.
At level 70 and with the XP stop activated, some revisited the depths again and again to complete them infinitely at the highest possible level (in Early Access this is level 3). This leveled up the companion Brann Bronzebeard and made him increasingly stronger.
Some leveled their Brann Bronzebeard up to level 60, making him extremely powerful and capable of clearing the depths almost single-handedly. Because every level above 10 grants Brann a 5% bonus to his damage dealt (up to a maximum of 250%).
What has Blizzard done now? Blizzard has removed the ability to activate an “XP stop” at level 70. This was still possible until yesterday and is no longer the case. All characters that previously had an XP cap at level 70 will now automatically gain experience points again and cannot prevent this.
Additionally, Blizzard has implemented a cap for leveling Brann Bronzebeard – from level 15 onward, the dwarf cannot become stronger during Early Access. However, if you already have a higher-level Brann, their progress has not been reset. Still, it is quite possible that Blizzard will adjust this later and reset Brann for the respective accounts – as otherwise, it would significantly ease the depths with the launch of season 1.
How Blizzard will deal with those who exploited this XP cap to level Brann remains to be seen. However, Blizzard does not need to rush with the decision since harder depths will only open in 2 weeks with the launch of season 1 of The War Within – until then, one can hardly benefit from an overpowered Brann anyway.
