Question On Swarming

[eddiemorales]

I was discussing swarming with someone, and he told me it’s now considered “zone disruption.” As a bard who plays six level 60 bards, I just want to say I’m truly sorry on behalf of all the bards out there who don’t care about other players. Too many of them power-level people with reckless swarms, causing others to die in the process. It’s disgusting how selfish some have become.

If I were to power-level someone in a dungeon, I would invite anyone who wanted to join so everyone could benefit — because that’s what a decent player does. This game is over 20 years old, and yet some people are still so obsessed with hoarding items and gear that they’ve forgotten the most important part of EverQuest: the community.

Now, what I’d really like to understand is this: what exactly is considered swarming? I’d love a clear definition. If I run one or two mobs in circles and AE them to death, that’s just kiting. Four mobs is quadding. So at what point does it officially become swarming? Is there a specific number of mobs?

Also, the bard’s level 54 song is an AE slow/snare, and I use it often for crowd control. What if I were running 20–25 mobs in circles with that song, but my group was killing them off one by one — would that count as swarming?

Again, I apologize for the behavior of selfish bards who give the rest of us a bad name. Thanks to them, bard abilities keep getting nerfed. They don’t care, though, as long as they get what they want. Bastards.

2. Definition on CHATGPT

Amount of Mobs That Crosses the Line
There’s no official “hard number,” but the community and dev stance generally goes like this:

1–4 mobs = normal play (single kiting, quadding, or AE crowd control).

5–15 mobs = advanced AE kiting, still considered normal depending on context.

20+ mobs consistently, especially in dungeons = swarming.

Zone disruption happens when your swarm makes spawns unavailable to others or causes deaths/lag to nearby players. That’s the behavior GMs targeted when they started calling it “zone disruption.”

Your Level 54 Song (AE Snare/Slow)
That song is legitimate crowd control — it’s designed to hold multiple mobs while your group kills them.

If you’re rounding up 20–25 mobs, snaring them with your level 54 song, and then your group kills them one by one, that’s not swarming. That’s just AE CC and group tanking-by-kiting.

It becomes swarming if you personally kill them en masse with AE DoTs/procs, not if your group is breaking them down.