What should an MMO do about the player still at 1/10 on a drop quest after the rest of the group is done? Blizzard, the studio behind World of Warcraft, just answered it for WoW Forever, the new version of its 2004 MMO: a hidden round-robin that deals quest drops to grouped players in turns. The drop rates don't change. And Recent Allies, a new friends-list tab, remembers who you fought beside.
What Happened
Blizzard left WoW Forever's quest drop rates alone and added a hidden round-robin that evens out drops inside a group.
The drop change
- Rates unchanged. Asked on September 26 whether Forever changes how quest drops work, Josh Greenfield, the WoW Classic senior game designer who posts as Aggrend, wrote: "The short answer is no."
- Under the hood. Blizzard instead added "a bit of under the hood functionality" to "more predictably round-robin quest items to people who are grouped."
- The reason. He said it was done "in the interest of our Pro-social approach."
- Still a grind. Drop quests will "still take time, just like vanilla wow," he wrote, but they'll be "less feast or famine" and groups will "kill things much faster."
- Not final. "We are still dialing in this system," Greenfield wrote, and asked anyone "afraid to group on drop quests" to try it.
- Left behind. In a reply, he said it's aimed at the player still short after everyone else is finished, who ends up saying "you can go, I'll wrap up here on my own."
- The reach. The post had about 199,000 views and 4,000 likes by September 28.
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.
— Josh Greenfield, WoW Classic senior game designer, on X, September 26, 2026, post
Recent Allies
- The tab. Recent Allies lists everyone you "Fought Together" with, plus their level, class, zone and the time. Wowhead, the fan database site for Blizzard's MMO, showed it on September 25.
- Same layer. Per Wowhead and Massively OP, an MMO news site, it tries to put those players back on your layer, Forever's parallel copy of a crowded zone, later on.
- Coloured nameplates. The same reports say it colours those players' nameplates.
- From the designer. Greenfield wrote that you're "likely to keep seeing people you group up with in later play sessions," adding: "Hell, you might even make a friend!"
The wider plan
- No realms. Forever is going realmless, so nobody picks a server before making a character, per Blizzard's recap of its BlizzCon deep-dive panel.
- Familiar faces. The same recap says "the goal is for strangers to become familiar faces," even at a much larger scale than the old realms.
- Tagging stays. Forever keeps first-come tagging, where the first player or group to hit a monster owns the kill and its quest credit.
- The friction. On September 20, Greenfield turned down shared kills, writing that "it is extremely important to our social pillar to maintain some of this friction."
- The dates. The beta runs until October 21, and WoW Forever launches November 4, 2026.
Blizzard presented the realmless plan in that BlizzCon deep-dive panel.
What This Means for the Riot MMO
Blizzard kept the fight over monsters and removed the part that breaks groups up, a call Riot hasn't made in public for its MMO.
- Nothing announced. Riot hasn't said how its MMO handles grouping or quest drops. The only confirmed fact about the game is that it's set in Runeterra.
- New ground for Riot. Every Riot game so far is built around matches. An MMO keeps the strangers you group with in the world after the fight.
- Friction kept. Forever still makes you compete for monsters, and removes only the lopsided drop split that leaves one player behind.
- Hidden on purpose. The round-robin runs under the hood and leaves drop rates alone, so solo questing gets no faster.
- Realms, rebuilt. Recent Allies tries to do what a realm used to do, putting the same names in front of you again, in a game with no realms.
- The Blizzard hires. Three senior Riot MMO hires worked on World of Warcraft at Blizzard: producer Raymond Bartos, engineer Orlando Salvatore and designer Brian Holinka.
| Rule | WoW Forever | Riot MMO |
|---|---|---|
| Group quest drops | Hidden round-robin, same rates | Not revealed |
| Kill credit | First-come tagging | Not revealed |
| Servers | Realmless | Not revealed |
| Past groupmates | Recent Allies tab | Not revealed |
Our read. Riot should copy both, and say so out loud. Blizzard had the round-robin in the beta without a word until Greenfield posted about it, and a fix players don't know about can't talk anyone into grouping. Recent Allies matters even more for a studio whose players have only ever met strangers in a match.
Blizzard has leaned on the same social pillar to ban gold-for-loot raids and to keep long flight paths. Those calls ask players to put up with something. The round-robin asks nothing of them, which makes it the easiest Forever idea for Riot to take.
What to Watch
Two dates stand between the round-robin and launch crowds.
Your Take
Should Riot's MMO quietly even out quest drops for players in a group?
Reported from Josh Greenfield's posts on X, with Wowhead, Massively OP, GamesRadar and Blizzard's BlizzCon recap. The MMO read is ours and speculative. Analysis by RuneGrove.
