This was probably the biggest problem with the released version of WW, so I'm going to retreat to talking about theory and balance first. Apologies in advance if this gets too math heavy.
The shape of the experience tables creates a problem of balance between classes. Let's consider the Warrior first. At first level, the Warrior gets +1% to hit for 100 XP. At 9th level, he gets +1% to hit per 10000 XP, or 1/100 the XP to weapon proficiency learning he would get at first level. Compare this with the Wizard, whose Spell Learning Points (SLP) derive directly from XP. Although this is partially mitigated by the exponentially increasing cost of higher (vs. lower) level spells, a 9th level Wizard is getting the same XP to SLP conversion rate as a 1st level Wizard. So the Wizard is getting better at a flat rate but the Warrior is getting better at a rapidly diminishing rate, and thus there is a big balance problem.
Our patch for this was to use a flat XP per level table, and the last game I played used 10,000 XP per level as described above. After thinking about that more, I don't think I like it. My recommendation for a new experience point system is based on the following principles:
(1) Characters should develop more slowly over time. It is harder to go from 97% to 98% than it is to go from 25% to 26%.
(2) Functional improvement per level (e.g., weapon proficiency per level or SLP gained) should be equal across classes.
Here is how I think I would do it:
(1) Choose the length of level 1. This is a guess, but I think the right answer is something around 5000 XP. I'd use the same value for all classes.
(2) Choose how steep you want the learning curve to be. I think an answer around 20% per level (i.e., it costs 20% more each level to gain the same amount of functional improvement).
(3) Convert XP to functional improvement points at each level based on the scale determined in (2).
Here is how that would translate:
Level 1: 0-5000 XP; CF = 5/5
Level 2: 5001-11000 XP (this level is 6000 long, which is 20% more than first level); CF = 5/6
Level 3: 11001-18000XP (this level is 7000 long, which is 2*20% more than first level); CF = 5/7
Hopefully you see the patter there, because that would go on for ever. CF stands for conversion factor, which would be used to convert XP into functional improvement points. Here are two examples of that:
Wally the Wizard has 14000 XP, which makes him Level 3. His base SLP (ignoring race, attributes, and any other relevant modifiers) would be (5/5)*5000 + (5/6) * 5000 + (5/7) *3000 [the number of XP into level 3] = 12141 if I did the math right. That looks complicated, but actually you that you have an even 5000 for every completed level and only actually need to do math for parial levels.
Wendel the Warrior has 9000 XP, which makes him level 2. His base WLP (newly coined acronym for Weapon Learning Points, which would convert back to 5000 WLP = 15% proficiency matching the existing Warrior rules) would be 5000 + (5/6)*4000 [the number of XP into level 2] = 8333. This would give him 25% learned proficiency (15% for completing level 1, and 10% more for his current progress through level 2).
More tweaks need to be added, but this is the baseline I'll probably start with. One example: Attackers' proficiency points are "better" than Warriors because they open up crit damage, and this was originally balanced by giving different XP tables for Attackers vs. Warriors. In this new system, the XP tables are the same, so I'd reduce the Attacker proficiency gain to something like 12% to restore balance between the two classes.
Whew, that was a long one. Sorry for rambling.
