Time to rethink exp bonuses and where they should be applied

So far after a 12 year break from EQ, I am really enjoying coming back and playing on Agnarr, but one of the things that really has struck me is how the path to 50 has become so stagnant in comparison to back around release. For the most part everyone is completely leveling inside a handful on dungeons, and with the zone exp modifiers, I can understand why. The issue I have with this, is that Norrath is a huge world and there are lots of interesting places to play in.

During my initial EQ experience there were players leveling just as much in Unrest/Mistmoor/Guk as there were players grinding away in High Pass/North/South/East Karana. But without an exp modifier, there is really no incentive to explore those areas again. Some of the best times I had leveling up were slaughtering centaurs and grinding Aviaks at KFC. I guess my point is, either remove the modifiers all together or start looking toward some of the more under played zones, for new zone experience modifiers. I plan to level a few different characters on this server, it would be nice not to have to follow the same path each and every time.

.....Saturday night I was in pick 173 of 40+ active Unrest instances, there are more then enough players looking for experience, to make this a worth while change. In DBG terms, interesting environment and game play = happy customers who will continue to feed the machine, repetitive lack of options = boredom and less retain ability.

I wouldn't be opposed to altering the xo buff or removing it completely. Maybe offset it by improving the group do buff.

One thing with locations is convenience. Some areas are just way harder to get to than others and simply not worth the trip for most people.

Hmmm I miss High Keep... that place was perfect. Bank and vendor right there!

Although I do agree with you on this statement, North/South/East Karana are no less out of the way then Unrest/Guk/Mistmoore are with a Wizzy spire and Druid ring right in North Karana, if you think about it. Would be really nice to see people camping Split Paw spires trying to form groups to go inside again.

For the average player, the biggest boost to XP gain is going to be logging in, finding a group quickly, and getting right at it. That works out best when everyone sticks to a few places. If you gave something like Lake Rathe a 50% xp bonus people would probably waste more time getting there, swimming, and finding things to kill than if they stayed in one of the common xp spots.

In original classic all of us that hit 50 first ran through exactly the same zones, Crush, Unrest, Guk...with the addition of CT because it was close to Guk and really only because of over population in Guk.

This is one of the main reasons I made my first character a druid. I wanted to be able to travel more easily and get to other areas besides just the main xp zones. In fact last night, I could not find a group in Unrest so I ported my halfling bottom to North Karana, ran to Splitpaw and found a group near the entrance who let me join. Not only did I gain good xp I picked up several gear upgrades (tunic, gloves, mask, etc.) and met some new folks.

So far I'm having a blast on this server because it fits my casual schedule and I'm loving being there for the initial "rope drop." I agree with the sentiment that exploration should be encouraged. At what point did they introduce hot zones? Maybe that could help by adding that now vs. later.

Keep in mind, people aren't just going to where the experience is, they're going to where the mobs are. I remember camping the gnoll spires for weeks and weeks in 2000. Can you imagine a full group on Agnarr killing those three static spawns and a roamer now, with all the QoL and power changes? Even Aviaks would be MAYBE one camp for a group on Agnarr when it used to be several.

Couldn't agree more. I detest the fact its always the same 3 - 4 zones regardless.
I was gonna suggest removing the ZEM from indoor maps. But I think I'd rather see them buff outdoor zones like the karanas and more out of the way zones like Paw.
People saying places like Paw is out of the way seems kinda crazy to me, you can bind in rathe/ferrott and you only need to cross lake rathe, to get to SK from that side, you can also bind in arena and gypsy camp in NK. But regardless, I'd like to see some love given to Karanas, Paw, Gorge, Runneye, Perma, Lake Rathe, and really Najena couldn't hurt either.

People would have to go to these zones for starters. Second, we have picks anyway so it's not like camps like KFC or Spires would be super crowded.

There's never going to be a pick for a zone with almost no viable, full group static camps. Talk nostalgia all you want, but people will go where the mobs are and there aren't enough to go around in a place like SK. I understand the OPs consternation, but this post is pretty much nothing more than "I don't like where other people are choosing to level" which is not anyone else's business.

ZEMs were originally set to get people into dungeons, and to take risks because dungeons often had higher danger. That all applies a lot less now.

I don't see why they shouldn't be revisited. The current popular dungeons will still be popular, even if more options are opened up.

Of course there is, also gnolls don't spawn at the spires right now anyway so problem solved but there are a lot of camps in all four karanas to appeal to all levels. If the exp is worth going to say SK, it wouldn't take much to make a new pick, granted karanas is more suited to kiting classes than actual groups, because there are plenty of high level roamers ( I exp there currently at 24).

Back in the day HPH//HK held several camps, bandits, orcs, gnolls, goblins ( when i leveled i remember seeing 3 good groups and we wait listed to get into the group when we started to out level the one camp we were in).

With the power curve now you can't get that many people in there per-say but they can script it so spawns increase in correlation to the amount of players in the pick. Much like how WoW does it on top of the new phasing script so people always have stuff to kill or items to pick up for quests.

That is not what I am saying at all, what I am saying is that there is a big world and there is no reason not to give incentive to explore and fight in it. Back in the day people were always in SK grouping and there are easily enough Aviaks for two groups, Gnolls for 1-2 groups and Centaurs for 1-2 groups. Not to mention Shadow men and Treants, that is just one zone. So speed the spawn rate, increase the exp to that of zones that get ZEM bonuses. This is not about what I like and don't like, it is about viable options and incentive to explore those options.

I would completely disagree with this comment, I may not of been on of the very first, but really close to the main pack of people who got to 50 back in the day and a lot of it happened outdoors. Heck I knew people who never set foot in a dungeon until damn near 50 for fear of losing their corpse.

He pretty clearly said he had an issue with how the ZEM are distributed, and asked that they be changed. It's not about where people are choosing to level, but why they are choosing to level there. I love Unrest, really do, but there are other areas to level in and I wish people were spread out among them instead of having just a ton of instances of Unrest. I love the instancing, not bashing that either, just wish the game gave a more similar incentive to go other places.

I'm personally planning to try and get a group going in some of these other places. Maybe that will help, maybe it will be a failure. Who knows? When people are worried about how fast they level instead of how much fun they have leveling, this is what you get. The ZEM's as currently setup promote a narrow set of zones for leveling. It's always the player's choice, but as has been seen, people want that path of least resistance.

From what I've seen there are not the mobs to support more people in zones like the Keep.
Though if load balancing were loosened for them it would be great.

Obviously things are being funneled just the reason is not clear. All they would have to do is tell us it's for server overhead or stability or arbitrary or whatever. Just like the mob spawn changes right before launch, did anyone buy the Berserker or the Classic(tm) thing?
Not really nor should they.
Just be square with us and buy more good will than giving away a krono on a TLP.

I don't think ZEMs are even necessarily the most important part of the equation. I think the biggest factor in zones that get the most traffic is monster density. How many mobs can I kill in the least amount of time.

Most of these places people are nostalgic for have both low mob density and high mob respawn rate (compared to the places groups are actually going). The ZEM is very relevant, but even with it removed people are still not going to gravitate towards places where you kill fewer mobs less often.

Like you can hunt centaurs in SK sure but you can't hunt them the way you can camp frogloks in guk. Someone was talking about "grinding" in the karanas and honestly with maybe the exception of the bandit camps at lower levels I don't think you can really consistently kills mobs faster enough in any of the karanas at any other levels to truly call it "grinding."

Is also a factor, another thing is mobs who heal, most people never really bring the right groups so when they run into that tae ew crusader and it starts out healing their dps... they just call the zone back and never go back. I camped CT throne the other day and we CRUSHED it, but we had a really amazing group, wizard, bard, warrior, ranger , druid, and cleric. Some places it's about bringing the right tools for the job.

But i've been cruising around CT a lot cause its been a hoot exping in, especially gators and doing lower areas of the maps, not to mention just the first room in splitpaw was giving me ruthless amounts of exp solo, downtime wasn't worth it but still. (something like 6-7%xp)

Not wrong there paw/rathe lake are on the slower side for sure for respawns. But hitting it even at the right level can negate that if its a group, like i'd hit paw on the early side its suggested as 25-40. IIRC. I'd go abit earlier and when you start out killing stuff and it becomes a point of waiting on spawns, move on heh. But then at least the zone's getting some use.

I mean this is why good zones get revamped to high stuff thats still not used is because it wasn't used enough in the first place.

I don't disagree about ZEM. But I was responding to his statement specifically about SK.

Yeah as a duo or solo of the right classes there are places, some well known others kept less known, in these zones to "grind" but for a full group no as that would basically clear the zone of anything level appropriate IF you could chase it all down.

I can never support any reduction in xp anywhere just because it has proven so difficult to get DBG to understand how important it is to players. Now if they want to spread things out, touching the ZEM and respawn timers is all that needs doing therefore they don't wish things to open up.

It's not the ZEM, not entirely. It's the ease of finding a group, it's the access to enough mobs, it's pickzones. The biggest reason why people back in the day did more exploring is because the good zones were over crowded and they had to go exploring. Pickzones eliminated that, and I don't think anyone wants to go back to a pickzone free world, not one with this many people on it. The only way to go back to that type of EQ would be to limit the server population to 1000-1500 people.

I do find it charming that before Agnarr came out people lauded the exp rate as being fast enough that people could go and explore and still get exp so we weren't going to see everyone crammed in the same 3 dungeons. That's not how people work. They go to the easy exp, the easy grouping, the easy option. No one says,"Hey, let me cobble together a group that spends 20 min running to some obscure zone for mediocre exp gains, where we will have a hard time finding replacements, instead of taking this open camp in a popular dungeon that has more mobs, better exp, and a nice loot drop."

If they changed the ZEM the only thing that would happen is the new high ZEM areas would become the new hotspots. People wouldn't spread out, they would cluster in the new areas.

I never got to group in guks, unrest, seb, or half of the dungeons in the game when I started because the entire EQ community was fixated on FTM->OT->DSP->DL back then. I solo'd my way through the 30s deep inside crystal caverns because outdoor zones in old EQ have always been the most boring way to level. I'm thrilled that mindset has been left behind.

I remember being in a 6-person group killing 5 spawns in HHK. This EQ is better than that one.