PC Gamer's Harvey Randall played the Forever beta and came back with the sharpest three paragraphs written about it so far: modern MMO questing collapsed into three-quest parcels with no ordering decisions, no travel and no level variety, while Forever restores all three under the names ordering, travel and level variety. His thesis in one line: modern design traded satisfaction for comfort. Read the full feature first; this is the response.
He is right, and we have receipts from a different system proving the same thesis. Forever's dungeon economy (covered here) does exactly what Randall praises in questing: monster-kill XP gutted, first-run dungeon-quest XP multiplied, repetition punished. Friction (one lucrative first clear) replaces comfort (infinite efficient spam), and the game gets better. Two systems, one philosophy, same beta.
The design literature called this years ago. Emil Kowalski's "Friction as a Feature" argues effort gates select for caring; Randall's Tirisfal anecdote (a quest deliberately too far, done anyway because the hearthstone was nearly ready) is the same mechanism with boots on. Good friction is a filter for attention, not an accident of old code.
The honest caveat, which Randall concedes and the tracker repeats: Vanilla friction was often ropeburn, not design. The test of Forever is whether its polish (more quests per zone, dungeon quest weighting, Determination-style recovery) keeps the satisfaction while sanding the accidents. Beta evidence so far says yes. Launch evidence decides.
SOURCES: PC Gamer Randall feature (Sep 19); tracker dungeon-XP coverage; Kowalski friction essay.