You can always disable cross-network play under social which disables playing with anyone on other platforms as well as anyone else who has it enabled. Since its enabled by default you rarely see anyone if you have it disabled.

It’s not too crowded in Hardcore!

Afaik there is a personal timer for the public events for each player. Before the last patch you could finish an event, teleport to town and get back, triggering a new event. With this methode I managed to “restart” most of the events which were finished right befor i could enter the area.

Man, I wish I had this problem. I feel like I always have a hard time finding people in my game in general and helltides take forever solo.

As far as I know, you still get these in chunk of XP in the loop. Also, the reset for those things are pretty quick too. I remember I basically walked around the area and the event reset so you could just hang around.

Just need to unlock more waypoints , you should be able to get basically anywhere on the map within 2-3 minutes from anywhere else.