I don't know where all this happens, but it appears that having more people in a zone increases that zone's respawn timers on mobs. It seems like the opposite (decreasing timers due to more players) should be occurring. Regardless, it causes well over 30 minute respawn times in zones like Lower Guk. Likely not a Mischief specific issue.
The zone's performance will affect respawn rates. Under heavy load, things will spawn more slowly than what's specified in data. Conversely, under light load, things can spawn more quickly than what's specified in data. Prathun, Jun 17, 2020 https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/bugged-spawn-times.268279/
If that were the case, then why does Commonlands not have insane respawn timers? And I'm not sure how ~40 people in Lower Guk is "heavy load."
Commons would use its normal respawn rate, less players active in a zone doesn't mean speed up timers.
Maybe you're not understanding? Commonlands, one of the most populated zones in the game, doesn't have insanely long respawn times like everything else populated does. Why?
Because Commonlands has been revamped from its original version. In that revamp, mob respawn times were drastically cut down. This is true of many revamped classic zones, such as Commonlands, South Ro, and Highpass. While there may still be respawn slowdown in these zones due to zone overpopulation, it's much less apparent to the players. For example, if a typical Commonlands pather respawns in 60 seconds, but heavy zone population is decreasing that rate by 50%, now it respawns in 90 seconds. Not a huge deal to the player, and most players wouldn't even notice that. Now apply the same logic to Lower Guk. Respawn in this zone is typically 23 minutes, 30 seconds. But if overpopulation is again decreasing the rate by 50%, it results in a respawn rate of 35 minutes, 15 seconds. The players will absolutely notice this. The % effect of overpopulation is the same, but it's much more noticeable in a zone with longer respawns.
You are right, I went to test Commonlands respawn time, the first mob I killed respawned in around 3.5mins, the 2nd mob respawned in 2.5mins. I thought Commonlands still used the regular outdoor timer of like 6mins40secs. There also not any concrete numerical data on how exactly the dynamic spawn timers work is there? I would think that 250+ people in Commonlands would make more of a difference than 40 people in LGuk. However, I still feel like respawn timers getting well over 30 minutes in any location is very bad for everyone. Most of the Classic dungeon timers are just so much higher than the rest of the game, and this weird and unnecessary system of increasing spawn times is just increasing camp disputes for players.
As far as I know, nobody has done extensive research into the exact effect that overpopulation has on respawn timers. A few things to keep in mind though: 1) It is not an intentional design decision. Respawn delay is due to zone server load being overwhelmed (or something to that effect). There was no design meeting where they decided "let's make stuff respawn more slowly if there are lots of players!" It is a performance issue, not a design issue. You are correct that it would be cooler if it didn't work this way, but we don't know the technical limitations that are truly causing it. 2) Your Commonlands test doesn't really draw any conclusions on the relative effect of its overpopulation vs. Lower Guk. If your Commonlands mobs that respawned in 2.5 - 3.5 minutes are actually designed to be respawning in 60 seconds (in an empty zone), then you're looking at a 150% to 250% decrease in the respawn rate. If the same logic is applied to Lower Guk that for some reason has 250+ players in it, you could be looking at repops of well over an hour! The effect of overpopulation on respawn timers is multiplicative, not additive. This can be confirmed via observing the relative increase in respawn times in zones where base mob repop is very fast vs. a zone where base mob repop is very slow. Overpopulation has a much more pronounced effect in zones that respawn more slowly to begin with. 3) Respawn rate was increased by about 21.5% globally several years ago (around 2014 or so, I don't know the precise time). This applied to all zones. For example, if you read very old posts about Lower Guk camps, the respawn rate used to be precisely 30 minutes. Today it is 23m 30s ( accurate if you're in an empty-ish zone, or you go check it out on a non-TLP server where there's nobody there). This change was due to increased player power/knowledge over the years, and was certainly intended to increase the number of mobs available in classic zones.
Definitely feels bad when you kill a mob with a 2m 25s respawn, then 18 people enter the zone and it goes to a 3m 30s respawn.
