no they were not nerfed, they were fixed, they kept getting higher each time due to hotzone and was not adjusted down as the hotzone vanished, that's a FIX not a NERF.
I never heard of this before your post, I don't think a bug fix was ever mentioned during the ZEM adjustments either in dev post or patch notes. Also here's my short list of zones that have a ridiculous high ZEM still: Highkeep Kedge Keep Kaesora The latter two have major problems of their own that make them really unpopular hunting spots, but my god the xp is good if you know how to work around those problems.
Ya I really wish they would make zones like this available when they would matter. i.e. Having the splitpaw ele invasion happen with GoD unlocks so it can be used to 65-70 exp etc...
I never knew they changed ZEMs. That's actually something i've been hoping they would do for awhile to encourage different leveling paths. Are we sure that those ZEM changes were applied to both live and tlp servers? It wasn't listed in the progression section. Regardless it doesn't seem to have shifted the leveling META from what i've seen. People still do unrest > guk > hole.
Yeah it's probably my least favorite aspect of leveling on these TLPs now-a-days. If you have your own group of buds you can explore around but if you're a single box player with LFG on expect to only be invited to unrest, the guks, or the hole for the first 3 months. It's really kind of sad. On live you would see groups of people everywhere. I clearly remember splitpaw having people in it at all times even though it was quite a run to get there. I think it's cool that the devs want people to exlpore everquest but is anyone really willing to do it on these TLPS anymore? Hey you guys want to spend 2 hours running across the world to maybe or maybe not find a zone with a good ZEM? They should probably just say hey we've made some changes to najena or splitpaw, you guys should check it out!
Well that revamp happens in LDoN which is before GoD, and the level cap raises to 70 in the following expansion OoW, so I'm not really sure what you're saying here
Ohh maybe I was mistaken! So the revamp has already happened on Mangler? They have LDoN open, correct?
Thanks for posting that. I was curious so I went and looked for the set of patch notes from that date https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/game-update-notes-mar-16-2016.231371/ So this fix wasn't responsible for City of Mist having it's ZEM flattened. Also how nice is it they listed the zones they changed, what a concept.
City of Mist was flattened in the normalization patch. I am pretty sure it was also somewhat reduced in the hot zone fix even though it isn't on the list. Anecdotally xp was lower after the hot zone fix but still really good compared to other similar level zones. It's still not terrible, just not what it used to be. The mobs are so low HP that if you can get over the fact that it used to be much faster xp, it's still a decent place to level.
Paw was pretty busy on mangler in classic but I get the feeling most of the groups were not pickup groups
Originally, ZEMs only applied to dungeons. I think that one patch right before/after Kunark came out was the only time they actually told us the percentage (when The Hole had the highest ZEM in the game). It would be nice to get a list just for knowledge. Also be nice to know if exp calculations still match the formula posted 20 years ago too and the variance is all from ZEM or other bonuses (was something like moblevel^2 in there or something way back when).
I would not want or expect that from the devs, this is still a game remember & part of that is enjoying the content & discovering things. Removing any need to go out & discover things by giving us a list of which zones have the best xp in them seems counter-intuitive to that design goal.
The real issue is that they POORLY populated the game with loot. Cramming 80% of the decent group gear into 2-3 zones. Then they doubled down on it by making mob density in those areas much higher( they assumed this added risk, and maybe it did, untill people learned how to navigate those zones) then they tripled down on it by giving those zones much higher ZEMs. Yeah, sooo, not smart. By "normalizing" the ZEMs they have only adjusted 1/3 of the issue.
quote="Hadesborne, post: 3908643, member: 4349"]The real issue is that they POORLY populated the game with loot.[/quote] LOL. Really, in 1997-1998? Who, pray tell, was doing it so much better that you can describe SOE as doing it POORLY (all caps?)
I can never understand why after 21 years the ZEM's are not just equal at 100% - 133% across the board for all the zones. They spend so much time developing zones that so many people never go to hunt or see just because they don't give proper experience... Jamming that many people to the same old zones just causes more issues with pick zones and more resources... Can we get we get a Dev response? Maybe a better technical explanation as to why this doesn't happen?
