Fighting for every tag: Forever players complain of packed quest zones

Early in Forever's launch, some players complained that its world felt empty, and Blizzard's Aggrend acknowledged that some zones felt emptier than they should, as we reported. On 7 November, four new threads on the EU forums said the opposite. Between 06:05 and 10:22 UTC, players opened topics titled "Impossible to quest", "Overcrowding and layering are ruining the leveling experience", "Please fix the layers? Far too many people" and "Please revert the layering change". Their complaint was that quest areas had become so packed that they couldn't tag the mobs they needed. When we read them in full on 12 November, the four threads held 179 posts between them.

This is what those players reported. Nobody from Blizzard has replied in any of the four threads, and nothing in them shows how many players a layer holds, what changed or how widespread the crowding is.

A sudden change, and a dispute about why

Many posters describe a sharp change from one day to the next. Rindersteak wrote that the day before "it was super chill", and that since the morning questing was impossible for them. PIECEOFCAKE apologised for having complained that the world felt "a little empty", then said that since "the reset that happened yesterday every zone I have been is completely packed with people", and put their own leveling speed down by about half.

They don't agree on the cause. Some replies put it down to the weekend. merevin said it was an update that morning, and CoolAde blamed "the Maintenance last night". Raptor thought it was "likely a mix between the fix and the fact it's the weekend". Several posters say layering was changed, but no Blizzard post in these threads confirms what changed or why.

Contested mobs, escort queues and rotating groups

Balboa, who opened the overcrowding thread, named Elwynn Forest, Westfall, Redridge Mountains and Duskwood as so overcrowded that ordinary quests become "unnecessarily difficult", and said they could barely play for an hour before logging off frustrated. They asked Blizzard to reduce the number of players per layer, spread players out better or let players prefer quieter layers.

One player, Higure, singled out escort quests, describing NPCs "camped by 20 people", with groups racing to accept the quest the moment the NPC respawns, "or otherwise its another 15+ min wait", and later called it a queue "that no one respects". In Thousand Needles, Tyneic said they were "waiting with around 50 other players to kill 5 harpies".

Some players had found a way to share. Tjillin, who said they play on "the rppve server", described permanent grouping in some zones: a group farms, someone finishes and leaves, and the next player is invited. Tjillin liked that chaos and expected the starting zones to calm down in a week or two. Leotharn suggested asking people to team up for specific quests, and hellraiser22 said doing that the day before, to clear a mine with strangers, had been a great time. Others weren't so lucky: Vyomesh logged out after their invites were ignored, needing one quest mob that was "perma dead".

Not everyone sees a crowd

A smaller number of posters in the same threads describe the opposite experience. Azaka said they were "having a blast" and would ask for "even more people in the layers". Shellshock described "a moderate amount of players" in Elwynn Forest, Westfall and Loch Modan, and dragonclaw said the population on RP-PvP "is always moderate". Elsiriana simply wrote: "The layering is fine".

A few posters describe swinging between the two. Numitor said they had twice been moved from an empty layer to a packed one. Late on 8 November, Link thought the last couple of hours had been better, and DuskFarer replied that after a "The world will change in 10 minutes" warning, the crowd was back.

Still being reported on 11 November

The overcrowding thread drew new replies on 11 November. Raziid said that in Desolace the mobs in several subzones were all dead, that a basic kill quest took an hour at prime time, and that it was "hardly any better in the middle of the night". Nemesy, at level 37, called it "a major issue in most 30+ zones I have been to". Nerox, at level 31, called it "the fun part" and said inviting nearby players solves it most of the time, and Azaka said tagging mobs was never an issue for them. Raziid answered with a list of level 30+ zones: Stranglethorn Vale, Desolace, Arathi Highlands, Alterac Mountains and Thousand Needles.

What these threads don't show

These are individual players describing their own sessions, at different times, on different rulesets and in different zones. They don't give a per-layer limit, population figures, the time of any change or its cause, and opposite reports in the same threads mean they can't tell you how common either experience is. We haven't tested crowding in the game. The changes players ask for, from fewer players per layer to choosing a quieter layer, are their requests; nothing in these threads shows Blizzard plans any of them. If your problem is different, and you can see nearby players you can't interact with, here's what to record in a bug report.