Why so secret on ZEMs?

Where is Burned Woods this week?

Off sirens ghetto

I always thought that any ZEM info we knew in the first place was generated by the players, not the devs. Outside of hot zones.

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ZEM, Spawntimers and rare-spawns are always been kept away from public. It's been like that since EQ released. I personally like it that way. They sometimes give hints in Patch notes like "Experience gained in Sebilis now reflects its difficulty and risk" etc. But I doubt you will ever get a dev writing increased exp gain by 5% in this zone.

Well, if the devs are the Tribunal, that might make people actually roll Barbarian Shaman. At least then they know how to get the developers to listen. (Imbue some ivory, carve your complaint upon it's surface, then throw it into the River of Frozen Warriors. Only then will the Tribunal hear your plea.)

Just kidding Ngreth, I always love how involved you are with the community here. Keep up the good work!

If this is the goal (and I think it's a good one), why not have ZEMs automatically adjust based on zone population/number of picks to encourage people to exp in underutilized zones?

Hahaha the games 20 year old,thanks for non classic mystery change my du

We went across the world to try Beholder's Maze last night. 4 dark blue minotaurs was the same exp as a single upper guk frog. When the *reward* for "exploration, mystery, and learning by trial" is a waste of an hour, your statement loses all validity.

Yup. Dungeon exp is still 100 million times better across the board.

Just remove all ZEMs across the board. Then we can adventure in the zones that appeal to us, instead of following the "ideal" path.

Far too much logic for this game.

The original concept behind ZEMs was they reward you for doing more dangerous dungeons. People wouldn't go to unrest because they would get trained and die. That's not as common anymore. Because the game is not as challenging as it was...everyone just piles into the high ZEM zones...

Most people do what everyone else does. If everyone is in unrest -- everyone will go to unrest. Then when it is pointed out that technically, its worse exp now because of a ZEM decrease (not actually true but it could have been). They will sit there and argue it is best because of "mob density" or "loot"

And then when a new zone becomes cannon, they will go there, and make up stuff about mob density and loot that's not true there either.

Because people are animals -- and behave like monkeys. Primates like to fit in.

Yea but you also gotta remember while dungeon ZEM is higher.. its more competition for the few mobs that are in the dungeon and also open world respawns are usually twice as fast if not faster.. Open world respawn is usually what? 7 mins-ish? while dungeons like Guk.. the respawn is like what? 18-25 mins?

Only in newbie zones. The respawn time in higher level outdoor zones (assuming that's what you mean by "open world") is much higher.

They are still lower in open world zones though.. I've timed them before

Mob density in dungeons trumps any kind of slow respawn issues most of the time. Now with /picks they are just a smarter choice.

Dynamic ZEM would method to try down the road if it wasn't something hard to setup from their end.

I've been hoping for them to solve this for years.

They should just monitor the 5 most-utilized and 5 least-utilized "killing" zones (not newbie zones or cities) of any given week and slap them with a 50% exp penalty and 100% exp bonus, respectively. We all know the top 5 killing zones of classic would probably be Lguk / Uguk / Unrest / Sol B / Crushbone, so seeing them take a 50% exp hit might cause some people to scatter. Although the loot in those zones (Guk /Sol B) is significantly better than anywhere else, so maybe not.

Throwing a 100% exp bonus at Permafrost, Split-Paw, Kedge Keep, or any outdoor zone might actually encourage people enough to venture out of the normal cycle though!

Just my hopelessly optimistic 2 cents.

they already give under-utilized zones an xp bonus. They call them Hotzones and they have been around for many years. They just have never done it on TLP.

I know...and I like the hotzone idea, but penalizing the over-used zones is just as important as the other half.

Guk and Seb have like 90% of the BIS loot for their respective eras, so there almost needs to be, not only incentive to go elsewhere, but disincentive to stay there.