Quest drops in a group get bad luck protection

Quest items that drop from monsters are spread more evenly over a group in World of Warcraft: Forever. A form of bad luck protection keeps anyone from falling far behind. Josh Greenfield, known as Aggrend, explained it on X on 26 September.

How it works

Asked whether Forever changes how quest drops work, Greenfield gives the short answer no. Under the hood, though, quests now hand out their items to grouped players in a more predictable rotation.

Aggrend explains how quest drops are shared in a group Load the post from X.

He describes the problem with furbolgs: one player sits at 8 of 10 items, the other at 1 of 10. In Forever everyone in the group should get drops more evenly. The system is still being tuned.

It is not a pure round robin, Greenfield adds in a reply. There is still randomness, but a player who has not seen a drop in a while while others pull ahead gets a push.

Aggrend: not a pure round robin, but bad luck protection Load the post from X.

Drop quests will still take time, just like in vanilla WoW, he says. There will be less feast or famine, and a group kills much faster.

Why Blizzard does it

The change is part of the pro-social approach of Forever. Greenfield names the awkward moment when one player is still at 1 of 10 while the rest are done. That player tells the group to go ahead, and then everyone feels bad for leaving.

Aggrend on the player who is still at 1 of 10 Load the post from X.

A bit of grind on drop quests stays part of the original design, he says. Blizzard wants small changes that make grouping feel more natural. He also points to Recent Allies, which keeps track of the players a character grouped with.

Blizzard already held the line on shared tagging, which pushes players into groups for camped monsters. Whether the new system also covers quest objects that players click, Greenfield does not say.