Another vote for Skyfire. And for Daybroke's utter deafness to our complaints. Another vote for Caverns. Once again proof DBG doesn't play its own game or it would realize what a giant pile of suck that zone is. Scorched Woods and Chardok annoy me because of the random see invis mobs, but that's minor compared to dive bombing drakes.
I actually liked Caverns (I made a fair bit of money off of selling collectables as well) and actually enjoyed my time there progressing through the zone while dragging around two boxes no less. Maybe having Mez & Blur, invis, and CoH contributed to making it more enjoyable (i dunno *shrug*). At any rate, I found it to be a very enchanter friendly zone overall.
Tower of Frozen Shadow has taken the coveted rank of worst zone to avoid for me. It's beyond frustrating to pull a mob, have it down to ~50%, and then seemingly out of no where you get half the zone and mobs that aren't even from the floor you're on railroad your group into the ground like gravel into mud.
It's more likely a melee vs caster thing. Meleeing under water, or trying to, sucks all the fun out of the game.
it's my… suspicion that the other end of your list, the kind of zone you like, is in the genre of Frontier Mountains, Gribbles, Valley of Lunanyn, The Grounds, Field of Scale (in particular the animals), Dragonscale Hills, and right on back to o.g. Dreadlands and OverThere and Lake of Ill Omen. Wide, flat, functionally empty zones with no-abilities exp piñatas sadsackin' around for sadsack players to burst …very slowly.
I think all water zones are problematic for 2 reasons: 1. Z-Axis handling in EverQuest is absurdly bad 2. NPC pathing & Autofollow are awful in regular zones but in water zones they are so bad that it makes your characters cry, the devs knew this & that's why there's a zone where all the tears flow to.
So far, no one has mentioned Siren's Grotto. Sucky zone if you are trying to get to Western Wastes and don't have evac.
that's like 20seconds to run. it's faster even to just scoot through than to evac. I can maybe understand not liking going other spots in Siren's, but as a transit zone? it's easier even than Runnyeye, or Skyshrine, or Echo Caverns, or Paludal, or ... heck, it takes longer to cross Cobalt Scar, and the tunnel TO Siren's is harder to find than the way through once you're in
So you want zones like Lceanium and Frontier Mountains or Plane of Knowledge and Guild Lobby...got it. I don't really have any zones I dislike. I like the having to figure out each zone environment. I like zones like Howling Stones, Skyfire etc. Learn the zone and it is fun! If there is no danger of dying or being seen, then why play? If you are the type of player that learns how to manage in one zone and uses that strategy for that zone in other zones, you are gonna get some surprises. If you leveled and progressed your character in wide open no see invis zones where life is easy, then you only learned one simple facet of how to play your class of character and only in a certain type of zone. When you venture into another type of zone, you learn and grow or you stay out of those zones and come to ForumQuest. Here, the strategy is simple...complain about your inadequacies by blaming them on the designers of the game. Thanks to those designing zones and characters. You do a great job at not giving us cookie cutter zones. Thanks for making the game fun by challenging us and making us think.
Pfft. Fastest I ever maxed AA on an expansion. Exp is fine. Soloing in the easiest zone (EW) gets 4 aa per kill with lesson. How is that bad?