Beta players in World of Warcraft: Forever (WoW: Forever for short) can now reach level 30. Blizzard's notes for the 1 October beta build also add a new dungeon, Excavation Site: Wetlands, for levels 26 to 31. Razorfen Downs and Uldaman open too. Dungeon quests now give less experience, and Blizzard has done another pass on Fury, one of the Warrior's talent trees.

The beta is the test version people can play before release. A character's level is a number that rises as they play, and a quest is a task a character takes on for a reward. Experience is what a character earns to reach the next level. The Warrior is one of the game's classes, the kind of character you play. A dungeon is an instanced area, a private copy of a place, built for a small group to fight through together. The full notes run long, so our patch notes page has every line, with buttons to filter them by class and topic.

What changed in the 1 October beta build?

The headline is the level cap, the highest level a character can reach. Blizzard says players can now level up to a maximum of level 30. The other big lines, in plain words:

Darnassus and Thunder Bluff are two of the game's capital cities. A barbershop is where a character changes how their hair looks. Honor is the currency earned by fighting other players, spent on PvP gear (player versus player, where players fight each other rather than the game). Gear is the armour and weapons a character wears. The notes price both PvP gear and upgrade tokens in Honor. Blizzard also says city guards now give directions to barbershops, which we think is the most old-fashioned kind of help there is.

Which dungeons can you run in the beta now?

The 1 October notes name 14 dungeons in all: the new Excavation Site: Wetlands, Razorfen Downs and Uldaman, and 11 that were already open. That count is ours, made from Blizzard's list. The 8 October notes add the new City of Dalaran dungeon for testing.

Our dungeon list reads every dungeon and raid (a dungeon built for a large group) on the beta's own list, with the boss fights, the big set-piece enemies, inside each one.

Why do dungeon quests give less experience now?

Experience, or XP, is what a character earns to reach the next level. Blizzard thanks players for their feedback on leveling speed as its ongoing discussions about the beta go on. It says that as part of those discussions it decided to cut the XP from dungeon quests in this build. Dungeon quests now give 50% less extra experience beyond normal quest values, and some quest rewards were recalibrated.

The same notes raise the respawn rate, how fast things come back after being killed or picked up, for many creatures and objects in Hillsbrad Foothills, Ashenvale, Wetlands, Duskwood and Thousand Needles. Those are five of the game's zones, the regions of its world map. Blizzard asks players to keep reporting areas where quests are hard to finish.

Has Blizzard fixed dungeon XP in the beta?

Yes. Blizzard's notes for the 8 October beta build fix a bug that cut XP for players in a group with higher-level players killing lower-level enemies. Until then, that cut was based on the group's highest-level member. Now, as in Classic Era, the re-released original game, only your own level counts.

The same notes raise the XP from killing monsters in dungeons by about 20%. Blizzard believes the two changes together will dramatically increase dungeon XP for most players. One rule stays: if someone in the group is far above the enemy's level, nobody gets XP.

Also on 8 October Aggrend, one of Blizzard's game developers, posted on Blizzard's forum that the team was fixing a bug with XP in dungeons. In earlier beta builds, the XP for each kill was based on the highest-level player in the group. With the fix, Aggrend says, you should now get XP based on your own level against the monsters you fight.

Aggrend's example of the bug is The Deadmines with four level 20s and one level 25: in those earlier builds, the level 20s got very little XP per kill.

Aggrend also mentions a 20% increase to base kills in dungeons, which we take to be the same change, and says the fix and the increase together should make dungeon leveling feel better and more even.

Don't expect Era's pace, though. Aggrend says dungeon XP won't be what it was in Era, the version of the game Aggrend's post compares Forever against. Some players want to "dungeon cleave" to 60, which we read as leveling all the way by running dungeons. Aggrend says making that the best way to level doesn't fit Blizzard's core goals, which it calls pillars, and that the team needs to hold firm on its balance changes. Two pillars are named: "World is the Main Character" and "Nurture and Protect Social Experiences". Once dungeons become the clear winner, Aggrend says, it has a knock-on effect on how players behave.

So how fast is it now? With perfect XP-per-hour play, Aggrend says, leveling in dungeons will be very close to the speed of the best questing, if not equal to it. Our view: a world you quest through beats the same dungeon run ten times over.

Aggrend posted the fix in the forum thread for episode 3 of Blizzard's WoW: Forever podcast, saying the episode didn't mention it. In the episode, host Countdown To Classic and guest Hammerdance talk dungeon leveling, questing and more with three of Blizzard's senior game designers: Josh "Aggrend" Greenfield, Jay Hartman and Rowan Ryder. Blizzard's post for the episode has the video, and so does this page, from the World of Warcraft YouTube channel.

What changes for Warriors and Druids?

The Warrior is a melee fighter built for close-up combat who spends Rage, a resource built up in a fight.

The notes have two lines on a Warrior's Rage from a critical strike, a hit that lands extra hard. One says Warriors now get 75% more Rage from a critical strike with a basic attack, an ordinary weapon swing. A later line says the extra Rage from critical strikes goes up to 100%, from 75%.

Talents are upgrades you buy with points to shape a character inside their class, laid out in trees. Fury, one of the Warrior's talent trees, gets another pass. Blizzard says it wants Fury to have more useful tools and real choices early in the tree while leveling. A new talent, Lingering Rage, adds time before your Rage starts to drain after combat. Improved Cleave and Boundless Rage are removed.

The Druid is a class that changes shape into animal forms. Tiger's Fury, a Druid ability, is removed. A new talent in Feral, the Druid's tree for fighting in animal form, is Shifting Power. It works in Cat Form, the Druid's cat shape, only and turns Mana, the fuel for spells, into 40 Energy, the fuel for Cat Form's attacks. All Druid shapeshift forms are now immune to Disarm effects, which knock a weapon out of a character's hands. Blizzard says a Druid disarmed before changing form still deals less damage while the disarm lasts. It says the change matches how it felt in original WoW, the game as it first launched.

Our talent calculator has Shifting Power, though it shows a question mark for the Energy number, because the beta's own files don't carry it. It now has the Fury talents named above, since the beta's build of 8 October: Lingering Rage sits on row 2 of Fury, and Improved Cleave and Boundless Rage are gone.

Compared: Blizzard's levels against the beta's own dungeon list

Our dungeon list reads each dungeon's level from the beta client's own files, published by the wago.tools site, for build 1.60.1.70450. The client is the game program players install. The client gives one level for each dungeon, and the notes give a range or a "+" level. The two don't always match.

Our reading: go by Blizzard's numbers when planning a group. For Razorfen Downs and Uldaman the client's single number sits above Blizzard's, by 9 and 5 levels. The client's list also names City of Dalaran as a dungeon, which the 1 October notes don't mention and the 8 October notes open for testing.