So instead of just Hot Zones, what if we revamped it to Expansions. So for example, at level 55, all of Kunark and Velious zones would have an experience bonus. Teek could stay on his weekly rotation of rotating various zones from both expansions for his daily quests. I’m assuming Hot Zones were implemented to help people get out and explore the world and see other zones and what not. Just thought this would open up a lot more options while leveling up. I understand [on live] that 1-100 isn’t really all that important, so I don’t see this being that big of a change. Inspired by making a baby Necro and running through levels and zones off of the beaten path such as HHK, Castle Mistmoore, Unrest, got whomped on in Greigs End, etc etc. Looking forward to try out the Depths of Darkhallow zones here in a few levels since I don’t really recall playing through any of those zones. Just a fun thought that I thought may help expand people killing grounds and give more reason to check out old/newtoyou zones.
Pretty much all past and current hot zones retain the "hotness" (bonus experience) even after they are not on the rotation offered by Teek. The rotation changes every time a server goes down or updates and the first of the month. Even when they are offered you can stay in the zone and still get bonus exp for killing any mob Here is a list of most hot zones - some of the rest of the info is wrong but at least the zones are right. And the special augs you can get in those zones. Seems to be a wide variety of zones. https://everquest.allakhazam.com/wiki/EQ:Hotzones A lot of players suggest setting up zones specific to certain levels, but um they already are - that is how the expansions were made. Here is a list of which expansions capped at what level and you can look thru that and figure out if your not around the level listed then might not be a good idea to go there https://everquest.allakhazam.com/wiki/eq:expansions And don't forget the map. It has a feature called "zone guide" this not only shows you the recommended levels for each zone but if you click them it will show you how to get there.
Ah that’s how it works. Neat. And I didn’t know the zones retained the bonuses. Good to know. Right, this isn’t so much about basing them on levels, because as you mentioned, they already are. This is just me trying to expand and include more zones for said level ranges. Instead of being pigeonholed into that one specific zone at 55, you’ve now got the option of 20 to choose from. And rather than the hot zones being static, they’d change as you leveled
I would suggest hot zones for 100, 105 and 110 to help ease the grind to 115 and soon to be 120. At this stage of the game's life cycle I highly doubt very many people enjoy the grind of leveling and gaining 50,000 AAs.
As far as I remember the idea of hot zones was to bring together players so they had people to group with. Then there was a few complained about it always being the same zones, so they changed them. Then they moved to the randomisation. The problem now arises is there are so many zones each level spread with increased exp that the lower level players don't come together any more.
While I’m not against the idea, the AA auto-grant feature helps with that tremendously Sadly, I just don’t think there’s enough of a population below 85 to even bother with any of this. I was on Drinal on my Necro at 8pm CST and did a /who for 20-30, 31-40, 41-60 and there was a total of 6 of us in that range that weren’t baz bots. And 2 of those other 5 were being PL’d. Granted that’s a small pool to pull data from and other servers have different populations. As far as live servers go, I’m pretty sure anyone below 85 is just running an alt through content as quickly as possible and are rarely actually new/returnees. To find the lower level crowds I think one would have to venture to the TLPs, and that’s where the energy should go for making changes at lower levels.
