Anyone who played vanilla knows it: a five-person party farmed the furbolgs of Felwood all night, and one member sits at 8/10 quest items while the rest are stuck at 1/10. Forever decided to take a knife to this classic pain point — but only a small one.
One, what changed
Classic development team member Josh Greenfield confirmed on X that Forever has added a low-level bad-luck protection to quest drops while grouped — quest items now rotate more predictably (round-robin) between party members, so everyone's progress evens out.
His example was vivid:
"There's nothing worse than killing a million furbolgs and having one guy in your group have 8/10 furbolg butts, and the other guy has 1/10."
Two, what did not change
Greenfield was explicit: none of the grind these quests are supposed to have is removed. Quest items still don't share, and you still have to put in the kills — "some amount of grinding is part of the vanilla magic, and we want to maintain it".
What changes is only the distribution curve: from "tons of effort, 1/10 drop rate" mysticism to a smoother "everyone gets their share". Kill speed stays as fast as before; the overall experience simply stops feasting and famine.
Three, why: to make you want to group
The design springs from Forever's "pro-social" direction: many players solo these drop quests precisely because they dread being the unlucky 1/10 person. Removing that fear makes group killing faster and steadier, so grouping becomes the natural choice.
It pairs with the already-live Recent Allies feature: people you grouped with are more likely to cross paths again later in your play — in Greenfield's words, "maybe you'll even make a friend".
Four, the one-line summary
| Classic | Forever | |
|---|---|---|
| Are quest items shared | No | No (vanilla flavor kept) |
| Group drop distribution | Pure RNG, huge gaps | Round-robin protection, evens out |
| Design goal | — | Encourage grouping, keep the grind |
Once the servers go live, quests like "10x Claw of XX" are where you'll feel this adjustment first-hand. The system is still being tuned ("still dialing in"), so live values take precedence.