I don't know if it's just me but there seems to be an awful lot of people doing the armour quests at the moment. Maybe the average player has hit level 20 this weekend. I know I did. Anyway, the upshot of it is, places like the giant kodiacs (which I used to level up to 20 with no competition) are now packed with players on their armour quests. The bonus is, it's so much easier to find a group who want to kill the same things as you, in the same numbers. I managed to do the chippy and BB spiders part of AQ1 in half an hour as there was a ready made group already on the job.
So, what am I trying to say? Get tyour quest sorted now, you will fly through it with the help of all the others doing it at the saem time. Whether this flow of level 20 chars will keep up I dont' know, but it did seem to start all of a sudden!
Cheers
Minky