Blizzard tweaks XP at level 70

by Mike Schramm Mar 31st 2008 at 3:30PM

Our good friend Boubouille at MMO Champion has news of an XP change in the game, but not where you might expect. Blizzard has secretly changed the amount of XP earned... at level 70.

But wait, you say, we don't earn XP at level 70! Ah, but we do -- after you hit 70, you actually continue to earn XP to level 71, but you never actually ding. And while before the patch, the amount you had to earn to "hit" 71 was about 814,700, now it's up to 1,256,500. Which makes sense -- while some folks are saying this might have been done to just fix a bug, Boubouille says it lines right up to the difference between vanilla WoW and the Burning Crusade, which means we'll need to earn about 50% more XP per level in Wrath of the Lich King.

Of course, this affects a few other things in the game -- Mania notes that pet loyalty is based on percentage level XP earned, so Hunters at level 70 will now need to hang out with their pets for longer to earn a higher loyalty level. But Blizzard isn't nerfing anything here -- from what we can tell, they're just lining up level 70 to become the first level of the next expansion instead of the last level in the game.

Tags: blizzard, ding, level-70, mmo-champion, pet-loyalty, wrath-of-the-lich-king, xp

Filed under: Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, Leveling, Wrath of the Lich King

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)

kr3wman Mar 31st 2008 3:44PM

If you install the expansion pack with one of your characters at lvl 70 with 1,256,500xp, does He/She automatically level up?

FantomRedux Mar 31st 2008 7:51PM

not really. You have to get 1XP more to ding, just to push you over to 71.

i think

Lab Monkey Mar 31st 2008 3:45PM

"But wait, you say, we don't earn XP at level 70! Ah, but we do -- after you hit 70, you actually continue to earn XP to level 71, but you never actually ding."

So when I eventually load WotLC I'll see all the XP I've earned since hitting 70 on my new XP bar?

Blackhorn Mar 31st 2008 3:51PM

I think that's plain wrong.

Nobody who was end-game 60 for a year instantly hit 61 when they installed TBC and killed their first demonic boar.

Yes, there is a set amount of XP required. Even at 60 you could see that number, but no, you do not continue to gain phantom XP.

Anyway... point of the story is the increased amount of XP to level in this patch. I'll shuffle off now :b

Blackhorn Mar 31st 2008 3:54PM

PS: Any spillover was from the last quest you turned in, or the last mob you killed. Once you ding though, you are cut off. The bar.. she just won't fill, man!

Mike Schramm Mar 31st 2008 5:03PM

Yeah, from what I know, Blizzard wiped XP (including rested -- that's linked in the OP) when the expansion hit. You could earn as much as you wanted ahead of time, but on expansion day, everybody had to restart leveling from just after ding 70.

Mattias Löfblad Mar 31st 2008 10:27PM

What you can do is complete as many quests as you can before the expansion hits but NOT turn them in. That way you get the XP for them when WotLK gets started.

Emil Apr 1st 2008 3:58AM

Or turn them in before WotLK and get the money ;)

viktories Mar 31st 2008 4:07PM

It's very possible that you do continue to earn phantom xp into level 70, and there's code when you install the expansion that wipes out any above a certain level of "lifetime xp."

Blackhorn Mar 31st 2008 4:25PM

If I recall correctly... initially hunters had problems with taming fresh pets at level 70. The pets couldn't gain loyalty because apparently loyalty is earned through experience and time commitment. Because the hunters were 70, they were not gaining experience, so their pets stayed at Unruly until blizzard implemented a mechanic to allow pets to level/gain loyalty.

David(Postal) Mar 31st 2008 4:22PM

It's just extra experience. When i started WOW again with Burning Crusade, I had the extra EXP into 61 that i left with

Robert H Mar 31st 2008 4:23PM

I just turned in some Oshu'gun Crystal powder at L70 and I got about 8800 XP. This was definitely not leftover from an incomplete quest. I'll be interested on seeing what they do with this 'phantom xp'

Blackhorn Mar 31st 2008 4:29PM

Seriously? Wow. I R DUMFOUNDERD. lol

Maybe it's a bug?

Votum Mar 31st 2008 4:33PM

That's a bug with that particular quest. Every time you turn in powder at Halaa, it says that you've gained XP, but you don't actually gain any if you're 70.

Xeren Mar 31st 2008 4:45PM

For the first half-second that I saw this article, I thought it was referring to an increase in the XP required to get from 69 to 70. I was about to get PISSED.

G Mar 31st 2008 4:54PM

Is it tomorrow already? ;)

Alternat1ve Mar 31st 2008 5:27PM

Mike,

I'm sorry, but you are wrong. At 60 pre tbc and at 70 now, you do not gain a single experience point at max level. The few points that you see at the bottom are the spill over from the exp that you gained at the end of your 69 bar. When you install WotLK, your exp bar will finally become unfrozen, just as it did for TBC.

The pics at the top of this article show the spillover (3399/1256500 & 1365/814300).