"WoW Forever does not include the XP-to-gold conversion for level 60 quests that was added to original WoW just before the release of the original Burning Crusade. We felt that it would be inappropriate for WoW: Forever players to be compelled to save up quests as they approach level 60 and then not turn them in until they transformed into a great profit.
"This change brings high-level quests in-line with the rest of questing in WoW: Forever, with the goal of giving players a good reason to complete those quests while leveling up to 60 and thereafter. Quests that were not affected by this change include those that already reward valuable items, repeatable quests, and those that don’t provide significant rewards because they’re quick, easy, or trivial to complete," via the official site.
While I never relish in 'um, actually'-ing anybody, I am unfortunately a videogame journalist and do have to look into these things: "just before the release of the original Burning Crusade" is a bit of a misnomer (and a change from the original announcement, which said "weeks").
Vanilla WoW added the XP-to-gold conversion in Patch 1.10.0, confirmed both here on a wiki and, god bless, the Octopus Overlords forum, which still miraculously has a news post from 20 years ago around the time of the patches' release that mentions the "Quest Experience to Gold Conversion at Level 60." I was also able to dig up these Shacknews and Macnews articles which both also mention it. The wiki also has a link to this archived page featuring the update.
Plenty of evidence to the contrary, which is important because I'm about to be a huge pedant.
Said patch arrived March 28, 2006, whereas The Burning Crusade was released on January 16, 2007. That's nine months—just a few months shy of a full calendar year. That's not arguably "just before" Burning Crusade, and only technically "weeks" before. It was 42 weeks before TBC.
But, in fairness, we're talking about a 20-year old timeline and I don't exactly blame a developer for having a slightly murky recollection. As for the actual change itself, the reasoning feels sound. I'm not sure many people were saving high-level quests for a big bump in gold, but given WoW player's propensity for trying to optimise everything, I wouldn't put it past anyone.
And, more to the point, Forever has a major problem to keep a lid on in terms of its economy—this isn't a game with a WoW Token, which was mostly implemented to help combat gold farming by price-capping a gold buying alternative, so a lot of these changes have been made to help slow and manage inflation. I think the trade-off of adding more money to higher-level quests is a reasonable one.
