Time to rethink exp bonuses and where they should be applied

The EXP modifier described DANGER, not convenience of travel

no one here is going to argue that East Karana has anywhere near the danger of any dungeon in its level range

indoor versus outdoor. outdoor zones are just WAAY safer

Maybe with the stats of characters back in 99, now days any camp in lguk is just as safe the only real worry is getting purposely trained for your camp, or people trying to KS your mobs.

Regardless of safety thats not really the issue is the simple fact more than 80% of the content is just wasted and unused except for maybe when time comes to do an epic 1.0 quest.
Otherwise why not just have an instance like the tutorial for 1-10, 10-20, ect, ect. And cut the middle man out, so we don't have to travel anymore. And just give us the raids there after!

Seriously though with the power spikes the indoor and outdoor is about equal, unless your in SK and get a random spawn of Zrith a lv 50 Undead Gnoll Necromancer that basically one shots everyone.

After mid 30's this statement is blatantly untrue.

Places in Classic EQ with mobs over level 40 to grind from 35-50 on:
Lower Guk - Frenzy camp, Lord Camp, King camp, Crusader Priest camp (4 groups)
SolB - Bats - N - Bugs, Giants (long respawn), LDCs, Efreeti and Imps (3 groups)
Permafrost - Giants (long respawn), Basement below Giants (1 group)

Note: the Hole did not go live at launch, it was added toward the end of the expansion after Nagafen and Lady Vox were killed.

Where is this "huge" world from 35 onward? There were literally 8 places to camp to effectively grind from 35 to 50 in Classic out-of-the-box EQ unless you were solo/duoing higher level guards in cities.

This thread made me think about some of the unconventional xp "camps" I used to do back in 1999-2000.

The hermit in South Karana. Yes, solo or duo, just killing that one mob and waiting for respawn.

The three Aviak guys on the platform in Lake Rathe... for hours.

The barbarian guards at the west end of West Karana.

Guards in East Freeport (this is how I first hit 50)

NPCs in the upper levels of HHK.

Also reminded me of one of my favorite places to go around level 5-10, the original original version of Splitpaw with giant snakes and what not. I loved going there because I could have the zone to myself. Most of the other camps I listed only happened because every other mob in the game was perma-killed. You really had to get creative to find something to fight much of the time. It's too bad you can't xp on guards anymore though.

The hardest part about leveling the latter half of the exp cap in classic eq was mob availability. This was evidenced in 24+ hour wait lists to get into an acceptable exp/loot camp.

Can't argue with this comment, but I can say that in my opinion, the modifier should never be so great that is creates a definitive path of character development. I think with the dumbing down of content, reward vs risk should not be the only factor that should be taken into consideration when it comes to ZEM, maybe exploration and over all content use(or lack there of) should be an additional consideration? Not saying you have to give the named Cyclops in West Karana or the Bandit camps in High Pass the same exp as Lower Guk.....but no reason it shouldn't be enough exp to make it worth someones time to go there. So what if its not the new "Go-To" zone, that is not the point anyway.

There are plenty of people who play, that would rather not sit in a mass group waiting for their chance to get into pick 173. Maybe if given the option of viable alternatives, some of them might actually go elsewhere.

I've been trying to argue this since Ragefire started. The counter-arguments are typically some variation of you don't have to level there...go wherever you want. While I understand this response, all I ever said was it would be nice if I could go wherever I want and have some chance at finding a group and/or decent exp.

I think dungeons were feared in the EQ days of old when you had to do corpse runs and didn't have origin to get out. They were incredibly inconvenient. Now, you can just pick to a populated zone, run to your camp (most likely without encountering any mobs) and just pick around until you find the camp open. The danger is gone. Combine that with the fact that just about every good item is dropped in a dungeon and you have RIP open world zones.

Exactly
World starts getting real small at that point.

The only thing dangerous about dungeons any longer are the other players doing incredibly dumb or malicious things. Sure aint the mobs

As a new/returning player, I'm going to give this a big thumbs up.

It was nice to see the massive groups in certain zones, but I went out of my way to try to experience some "old" content from the good ol' days. It felt quite dead by comparison. I mean, in Guk you'd have 20 o rmore instances, but in Paw, I hung out for a while and eventually found a group in my 20's but there was a 10 level spread and it just didn't last. I saw another group there, but they came with a crew so there was no extra slots to fill.

Paw is so classic... neat zone too that offers some cool challenges like fighting enchanters. That zone should have a huge zem and then the Qeynos side of the world would probably be back on the map. And why the heck are there no gnolls at the outside spires to facilitate the 20+ leveling and transition into inside Paw?

Anyways, I would definitely like to see things more evened out. The game needs it -- there is no point in rushing, but there's no enjoyment in sitting in dead zones on a server with thousands of players.

Paw has a considerable Zen bonus, however, it's so far out of the way that it essentially mandates a wizard or druid port to get there. Because of the fact that the player base doesn't want to fork over plat for ports because of early server plat scarcity, when there are easily traversable dungeons with equivalent ZEN accessible on foot, without having to reset their ec tunnel bind, it doesn't get much play

So Machen needs to use his powers of find and find the post by Prathun near the end of Kunark on Phinny where Prathun changed the ZEMs for all zones.

If I remember correctly (and I don't always), He changed the ZEMs so that every dungeon zone had the same ZEM and every outdoor had the same ZEM. Dungeons have a higher ZEM than outdoor zones because of their difficulty level. This is why you want to level in a dungeon over an outdoor zone cause their ZEM is much higher.

But, technically the ZEM for all dungeons should be the same (If I remember his post correctly).

Anyway, Machen can probably dig up his old post somewhere or maybe he can respond to this and let us know exactly how the ZEMs work now since the revamp about a year ago.

You forgot Kedge Keep / Kithicor (w/ undeads) / OOT and a couple high level camps here and there (are HHK nobles in the game? Ice giants in everfrost).

I think the biggest part of your post is that you can't really kill guards anymore. They were such a huge part of the game...hands down my favorite part of true classic / P1999. I made a mage and am trying to get from 20-60 just by killing guards (currently at 41).

What is considered a worthwhile camp in P99 (or originally) wont support a duo here and classic leveling in that range was always considered problematic until RoK and eventually SoV which was the fix.
But hey people want to open in Classic(tm) so there it is and why I aint gettin in any hurry to "enjoy" it.

Kithicor isn't really exp-able; as 50% of the time there's nothing lvl 40+ to kill.

Kedge is another beast, and left out intentionally, so that the casual sucksters don't get tempted to go there and wipe because they dont know how to corner their casters etc.

Well now since they fixed it last week to despawn the undead as originally designed. Yeah not a great place for that.

Why don't you educate some of those sucksters as you were once educated?
I mean would it not be good for the game if everyone knew as much as you did?

Interesting thread, a couple of thoughts:

-many, many zones could easily handle more mob density. and/or faster respawns. In the case of some dungeons a faster respawn would actually shrink the camps. Player power is more, this is one way to make the old "3 group camps" areas back into at least 2.

-Travel is annoying. If you could run your monk (example) from Qeynos to Freeport and do a faction-based quest to gain an additional origin ability then you would encourage a lot more movement. Even if each continent had one such quest, in a location aimed as most useful to lowest levels this would be handy. I doubt it pinches porting $ that much as people want the closest port to the destination.

Or a boat between FP and Qey.
The horror... the horror...

Getting hit in water doesn't cause push any more. No need to corner anyone.

Nice QOL change