Change ZEMs for a MORE Classic experience!

[Vizax_Xaziv]

Right now most of the Kunark zones are very underpopulated resulting in a decidedly non-Classic gameplay experience. I wanna see groups at the giant fort in FM. I wanna see groups camping outside of Karnors Castle in DL etc etc.

[Swish]

Title = https://i.imgur.com/apRp7TQ.gif

[loramin]

"Classic" can mean two very different things to different people: I like to categorize it as "classic mechanics" vs. "classic environment".

As Swish pointed out, mechanically ZEM changes aren't classic. But you're not wrong either: it would feel more classic if we had people spread out across many zones, the way they were in classic, instead of clustering in certain "hot zones" (especially when those "hot zones", like The Hole, weren't "hot zones" in classic ... making things feel extra "un-classic" in terms of the environment).

Usually the staff here prefer classic mechanics over classic environment ... but it's not 100%. It took them 10 years, but they did finally nerf Soulfire, for instance (a clearly unclassic change, mechanically ... which made for a much more classic environment). So similarly here there's a chance they'll decide that making "hot zones", where most of the server goes to XP, isn't the most classic option (overall).

Personally I think the most classic thing staff could do is change ZEMs and either not tell us, or be super cryptic about it in the patch message ... because we all know that's the sort of thing Verant would have done to solve this ;)

[azxten]

From what I remember ZEM already isn't classic here. No ZEM was over 100 in true classic. P99 offers almost a 2x exp rate in hot zones.

As I and others have said this is why the server ends up so top heavy. True classic EQ was painfully difficult to level in. Massive amounts of bugs, more difficult channeling, and slower exp. Enchanters never charmed in live classic/kunark because the spell was so broken. No one really knows why some things are classic and others aren't. Probably just the preference of the devs. Pet attack delay from daggers was nerfed, AE groups nerfed, Bard AE nerfed, but Enchanter charm is left alone and double exp rates are left in. Newb mob rates were increased and we even instanced Teal to "reduce congestion."

The congestion in EQ and the resulting social drama is what made the game fun for me. The staff seems to see this as a big inconvenience as people cry in petitions. On live such trivial petitions were basically ignored entirely but on P99 you can record video and post it on forums and get someone banned because they stole a mob from you. It's ridiculous. No one has any kind of reputation outside of raiding. I've played on roleplay type servers that have the same problem. If you actually play "evil" and screw people over the players cry and staff ends up intervening and building rules around just how evil you're allowed to be.

P99 for whatever reason seems to take a stance that end game raiding IS the point of EQ. However, for a lot of players like myself the group/solo mechanics and the social atmosphere of having lots of players at all levels is what made it enjoyable. I don't like P99 where everyone you meet seems to have a 50+ alt and the whole game ends up focused on raiding due to the fast exp rates.

EQ raiding is pretty tedious and 10x moreso on P99 where all raid strategies are known and encounters trivialized by guilds easily recruiting hundreds of high levels that would never be able to make it that high without the bonus exp rates and easy enchanter pet groups. Not to mention the near constant "power level" groups sitting in the high ZEM areas to get new members to raid ready as fast as possible.

P99 is so close to a truly enjoyable classic experience but this treadmill to max level always seems to be left in for whatever reason resulting in empty zones and a sentiment that the game won't start until you're 50+. Once you get to 50+ you'll find that your character is basically pointless. Your guild will have 100+ people showing up. Your class will be alted by at least 10 other people who can login to their alt depending on classes needed. Guilds are mainly a core of players who have enough alts to do all the interesting work themselves. New Monk? Don't worry, just AFK and hit auto attack, your guild officer will log on their Monk to do the pulls because they don't have time to teach you and rely on you. Otherwise they wouldn't be able to take all the loot for themselves as almost every guild's leadership on P99 does. Any raid loot you get is ultimately pointless as your guild is more than powerful enough to kill raid mobs even if you're mostly naked. It only makes grouping and soloing easier but with the trivial max level treadmill this also quickly becomes pointless. All raid gear ultimately is only useful for making soloing for more useless gear easier and for power leveling alts.

I wish Teal and Green could exist with different rule sets. Let Green be "P99 lite" with the faster ZEMs, hand holding from staff, etc. Let Teal be "P99 classic" with slow exp, no intervention from staff except for serious problems, new raid mobs with more HP or challenging attacks, and the only non-classic changes being nerfed overpowered items and strategies that apply equally across the board. Not where some classes are left alone like Enchanter even though tons of evidence exists to show they're the most ridiculously overpowered non-classic class above and beyond anything that ever existed in live yet mysteriously are allowed to keep this power on P99.

Just waiting for Green 2.0 now, I hope it's more classic than Green 1.0 was. No bonus exp, no OP Enchanter, no staff hand holding, no instancing, no modified spawn rates, no quest exp nerfs, no easy channeling, no overcap stat bonuses, no OP pet HP amounts, more difficult or modified raid encounters to maintain challenge, and so on. Fix all of this and we'll see a return to real classic EQ including leveling groups all over the place and a real raid scene made up of skilled players who put in the time having to learn fights for themselves. One can dream.

[bomaroast]

The people here for the joy of it are very few. For most, this is a job. There's no room for inefficiency.

[Vizax_Xaziv]

The people here for the joy of it are very few. For most, this is a job. There's no room for inefficiency.

Which is why staff intervention would be required for any change. People simply won't group where the XP is slower -- especially when other zones may also be more difficult as well.

[loramin]

Enchanters never charmed in live classic/kunark because the spell was so broken.

...

Just waiting for Green 2.0 now, I hope it's more classic than Green 1.0 was. No bonus exp, no OP Enchanter,

This part hurts because it's so right. Everyone who played on live knows Enchanters weren't like this, but for ten years everyone has just ignored the obvious contradiction here.

At this point Enchanters have been so unclassic for so long, I'm firmly convinced that either Nilbog or Rogean played one in Live, and has a blind spot for them. Therefore I don't think we will ever see classic (ie. not soloing) Enchanters on P99 ... but I truly hope I'm wrong.

[Fammaden]

Its certainly not classic in spirit, even if the ZEM is era accurate. People 50+ in Kunark leveled in KC and Seb for pickup grouping, and then after Velious on my server at least Velks became another hugely popular pick up group XP zone. There most certainly were not 30 to 50+ people in xp groups and looking for group in the Hole like, ever. I can't imagine other servers during Kunark/early Velious were much different.

The Hole was already good ZEM on blue back before this change when it was bring your own group and there were never more than ten people there at the time. The extra ZEM has proven to be overkill IMO. It didn't bother me much on blue when they first raised the ZEM. The Hole is a great zone and its fun at first getting more people to go there and xp in more parts of it than just docks. But as time wears on and now we see the effect it had on the green "Kunark" experience, its hard to see this as a good path for the spirit of the green server.

[cd288]

Its certainly not classic in spirit, even if the ZEM is era accurate. People 50+ in Kunark leveled in KC and Seb for pickup grouping, and then after Velious on my server at least Velks became another hugely popular pick up group XP zone. There most certainly were not 30 to 50+ people in xp groups and looking for group in the Hole like, ever. I can't imagine other servers during Kunark/early Velious were much different.

The Hole was already good ZEM on blue back before this change when it was bring your own group and there were never more than ten people there at the time. The extra ZEM has proven to be overkill IMO. It didn't bother me much on blue when they first raised the ZEM. The Hole is a great zone and its fun at first getting more people to go there and xp in more parts of it than just docks. But as time wears on and now we see the effect it had on the green "Kunark" experience, its hard to see this as a good path for the spirit of the green server.

You’re right about the hole, but zems also got rotated back in the day. I don’t mind seeing a ton of people in there if they were planning to eventually rotate the ZEM again. I also think it would be cool if they didn’t disclose the specific ZEM changes; just told us they’d been changed and left it up to the players to go out and find which zones had a boost

[coki]

Just waiting for Green 2.0 now, I hope it's more classic than Green 1.0 was. No bonus exp, no OP Enchanter, no staff hand holding, no instancing, no modified spawn rates, no quest exp nerfs, no easy channeling, no overcap stat bonuses, no OP pet HP amounts, more difficult or modified raid encounters to maintain challenge, and so on. Fix all of this and we'll see a return to real classic EQ including leveling groups all over the place and a real raid scene made up of skilled players who put in the time having to learn fights for themselves. One can dream.

So if they were to release a truly classic server everyone would just exploit it, like having 100+ people all dump their Ivandyr's hoops charges on a the same boss to kill it instantly...This right here is why we don't have a 100% classic experience

[TripSin]

Enchanters never charmed in live classic/kunark because the spell was so broken.


Didn't read the rest of that wall of text, but feel compelled to chime in on this bit of ignorance. I charmed in classic. I'm fairly sure it's not just because the spell is somehow less broken than it used to be or something like that that people didn't charm as much back then. It's because it's now 2021 and not 1999. It's because we're no longer on 56k modems with huge delay latency. Charming requires fast reactions to charm breaks. Trying to do this on dial up and slower connection speeds made it incredibly more risky and harder to do. It's because we have GINA and timers. It's because everyone playing P99 is much more knowledgeable about how EverQuest works - for example, probably the vast majority of people playing in P99 know about using clickies to decrease cooldowns. It's because in 2021 we have a different mindset and there is a different meta attitude. These all make a world of difference. All of this contributes to why charming is more prevalent now than it was in classic not just because "herr dEy MaKe cHaRm SpElL sO eAsY nOw". And even with all this charming in P99 is still extremely dangerous and takes skill to pull off.

As much as people go on about this and that being "not classic", things will never be classic because we the players, our hardware, our knowledge, etc. etc. are not classic. We the players are the least classic thing about P99 and the players are the largest component of EverQuest.

[Fammaden]

Broadband and hardware probably does play the biggest part, charming this way was a death sentence when most people were prone to lag or completely lock up for tens of seconds on end or straight up disconnect at any time. But another interesting contention is that channeling is too good on P99. Strictly anecdotally it does seem far far easier to channel through hits and complete a spell here than it was back then.

[TripSin]

Broadband and hardware probably does play the biggest part, charming this way was a death sentence when most people were prone to lag or completely lock up for tens of seconds on end or straight up disconnect at any time. But another interesting contention is that channeling is too good on P99. Strictly anecdotally it does seem far far easier to channel through hits and complete a spell here than it was back then.


I would say there is no "probably" about it. You die in literally seconds from a charm break if you don't react fast enough. GINA will give you an audio alert basically right as the charm breaks and our fast connection speeds give us a better chance now to react before being ground into a corpse. In classic, not only did you have to deal with way longer network latency, but you probably weren't doing things like stacking your CHA up as crazily, abusing clickies, or checking the wiki for the most suitable charmed pets like is now commonplace.

I've seen this night and day difference too when playing Warcraft 3 and WC3 came out years after EverQuest so more people were starting to get into broadband (which was still WAY slower than the speeds we have today). There's this custom game in WC3 where you play as ice skating demon hunters and it was very challenging back in the day. You play it now and it's just SO much easier because you don't have the delay like you did back in the day and your unit responds faster.

[lonig]

Latency of our connections was nothing back then. Dialup itself has generally low latency. Even more so by the time EQ came out. The game was never packet heavy either, so increased bandwidth itself meant very little to EQ gameplay. Our better computers help more than broadband does.

Better understanding of CHA is more likely a culprit. In 99 I had no idea CHA would help. Why would I raise CHA on a chanter? Another issue was level range. I'd charm the highest I could. While now, we generally know to go a bit lower to try and get a bit longer before a break.

Another thought is the coding for p99. I imagine it is different than live was, but I don't think the increase in charming is solely due to that. I think it is more like most changes to behavior in p99 vs live, and that is knowledge and 22 years of trying out different stuff.

[TripSin]

Latency of our connections was nothing back then. Dialup itself has generally low latency. Even more so by the time EQ came out. The game was never packet heavy either, so increased bandwidth itself meant very little to EQ gameplay. Our better computers help more than broadband does.


Yeah, you're right. Our 100Mbps+++ connections really aren't all that much different than the ones we had with 56k modems :rolleyes:

When literally just 1 or 2 seconds can mean the difference between life and death on a charm break, why would connection speed matter? :rolleyes:

[lonig]

Yeah, you're right. Our 100Mbps+++ connections really aren't all that much different than the ones we had with 56k modems :rolleyes:

When literally just 1 or 2 seconds can mean the difference between life and death on a charm break, why would connection speed matter? :rolleyes:

I mean, the speed has jackshit to do with latency. So... I can't help if you don't understand how the internet works.

[Izmael]

Speed has everything to do with latency, when you're talking about gaming netcode.

[Fammaden]

I recall packet loss being a huge issue back then.

[Izmael]

On topic though - people didn't charm back then because we all sucked at the game badly back then + terrible hardware we were playing on.

Spell was all right. Players weren't.

To be more classic, P99 would need players from 1999 more than anything.

[Fammaden]

On topic is actually the Hole ZEM.

[lonig]

...To be more classic, P99 would need players from 1999 more than anything.

Amen to that. We were all just havin a good time and trying to figure it all out. Can't replicate that part of the experience. I still enjoy the hell out of it tho. Great community.

[apprentice04]

why does everyone have such a boner for "classic?"

[Izmael]

why does everyone have such a boner for "classic?"

Good question. Not like we're on a classic-EQ related forum.

[Toxigen]

windows 98

dell dimension XPS

Pentium III 750mhz

Ati Radeon 128mb

768mb ram

56k modem


If you're playing p99 on anything better than the above setup, NOT CLASSIC.

[BlackBellamy]

P99 for whatever reason seems to take a stance that end game raiding IS the point of EQ. However, for a lot of players like myself the group/solo mechanics and the social atmosphere of having lots of players at all levels is what made it enjoyable. I don't like P99 where everyone you meet seems to have a 50+ alt and the whole game ends up focused on raiding due to the fast exp rates.


You go raiding so you can get gear which doesn't make any difference in the raid so you can go raiding so you can get more gear which doesn't make any difference in the raid. If you're not level 60 then you go raiding so you can get gear which won't help you level faster so you can go on raids so you can get gear which won't make any difference in the raid.

This is because grouping and raiding are both trivial and safe. You won't increase your xp rate with super gear because everyone is already min/maxing the pull rate and the raid won't get any easier with your super gear either because it's already trivial with the overwhelming numbers and the paint-by-numbers style.

The P99 end-game is a victim of it's own design. It never changes but the players acquire more information on how to complete it. It never becomes more demanding or challenging. It's been documented, photographed, dissected, examined, taken apart and studied.

The only challenges left in this game are self-directed. If you don't come up with something to make it fun for you and your friends, a great deal of disappointment and boredom awaits for you at the top.

Edit: if you ask me to define "classic" I'm going to use words like "mysterious", "unknown" and "challenging". Classic is a feeling, not mechanics.

[derpcake2]

If you aren't happy, like I was, do like I did, and leave.

Current iteration of p1999 green is neither classic nor fun. I do not see its merit and left.

Feels good.

The /list mechanic is probably the biggest example of "how do we advantage neckbeards that share accounts" I've ever seen. That literally pushed people to share accounts, because staying awake for extended periods isn't just unhealthy, its not even a possibility for those with real lives.

Game is starting to look like a video game version of a "who can shoot up the most meth" contest, while the server has some very, very strong competitors, I can't imagine sane people trying to compete.

[loramin]

On topic though - people didn't charm back then because we all sucked at the game badly back then + terrible hardware we were playing on.

Spell was all right. Players weren't.

To be more classic, P99 would need players from 1999 more than anything.

Seriously, it wasn't just that players were idiot back then, and it wasn't (just) that some people's network connections sucked.

Again, there's a willful mind blindness here, where everyone just dismisses how incredibly different Enchanters were on live, by turning their brains off and repeating "players were dumb" and "connections sucked". Nevermind that live had something like 20x more players than we have here, all experimenting with how to play their class ... and the vast majority coming to the conclusion that the best way for them to level was to group. Nevermind that tons of Enchanters did work on their Charisma (if only because no one understood how stats worked ... but the character creation boxed text told them Charisma was important!)

And even if it was the connection: we added an "unclassic" mob AoE limit to reflect that here. To repeat: we did something unclassic to make things more classic overall. If you think Enchanter charming ism't classic here, because of internet connections ... the way Bard charming wasn't classic, because of internet connections ... then the logical thing to do would be to bring back classic somehow.

But I think it was more than that. I think charm resists, or some other hard-to-emulate-exactly mechanic, were worse on live. But again, 11+ years of ignoring how unclassic Enchanters are makes me think the devs are just as happy with unclassic easy-solo Enchanters as everyone else.

[galach]

Nerf the hole by 75%? ok

[OuterChimp]

why does everyone have such a boner for "classic?"

Eff those Luclin character models. Man, eff those big!

[Clazxiss]

Nerf the hole by 75%? ok

Don't you even think about it! Please! This is a great zone to get that Dungeon Crawl feel that people should have in EQ. I'll ask you to disregard the "classic purists" and to direct them to Green when they want something close to original EQ.

When the Hole launched on live, it saw action for maybe a week, tops. Then it was forgotten, with the exception of people getting their epic pieces. I remind people that their monthly subscription bills paid for that content, why not use it?

Nope. "Classic purists" would rather go to Sebilis, where the zone was constantly camped by 50% or so. Fun fact, you were not dungeon crawling there. You would be zoning in to a place where you could walk from the entrance down to juggs because multiple group camps were keeping respawns dead. That's not an adventure.

I applaud the P99 staff for making ZEM changes to bring adventurers back to dead zones. Before my hiatus, I had friends joining me to explore and level in Xorb, Runnyeye, and Splitpaw! The Hole turned out to be one of the most entertaining zones for a crawl that EQ could offer. One of the biggest complaints in the MMORPG genre is that leveling feels like a structured theme park ride. I've found "classic purists" to be the worst offenders of this in the fact that even if ZEMs were left to their classic states, they'd still choose the zones with the best XP to level in. Coincidentally, those zones also happen to be places of solid loot, such as Sebilis, KC, and such. The classic experience these players want is the lazy inconvenience of having an XP/loot camp for the 16 hours they play while watching repeats of the Springer show.

[Fammaden]

Don't you even think about it! Please! This is a great zone to get that Dungeon Crawl feel that people should have in EQ. I'll ask you to disregard the "classic purists" and to direct them to Green when they want something close to original EQ.

When the Hole launched on live, it saw action for maybe a week, tops. Then it was forgotten, with the exception of people getting their epic pieces. I remind people that their monthly subscription bills paid for that content, why not use it?

Nope. "Classic purists" would rather go to Sebilis, where the zone was constantly camped by 50% or so. Fun fact, you were not dungeon crawling there. You would be zoning in to a place where you could walk from the entrance down to juggs because multiple group camps were keeping respawns dead. That's not an adventure.

No one is crawling it on blue or green either, they are sitting in one spot pulling mobs for hours like any other xp group ever. On green at primetime you can often walk from the zone in all the way to the dock without aggro.

This isn't about classic ZEM, which may actually be accurate. Its about one zone being the only place anyone will consider for xp pick up groups, which is a non classic experience.

[-TK-]

Game is starting to look like a video game version of a "who can shoot up the most meth" contest, while the server has some very, very strong competitors, I can't imagine sane people trying to compete.


The reason it appears like this when you step outside for a minute is that P99 is mostly 'ruined' by 10-12 of the most neck-beardiest neck-bearding addicts that play here that are enabled by the staff. If the recent Furoar 'suspension' didn't open a lot of eyes then nothing will. Lots of people cycle in and out over time, but there's still the small core that never stops playing and organizing. These are the people driving the direction of the server, and they have the most influence on the overall zeitgeist. The general staff comes in to exert shows of power here and there to give the impression that they have control of the in-game situation, but it is mostly the same few people that are involved in the drama and negotiations again and again with the staff that are really behind the wheel of everyday life on the server.

At the end of the day this is someone's private custom box with a classic EQ label. It went from 'This is classic EQ', to 'we only care about classic mechanics, not feel' to 'lists are cool' to 'this is the MOST classic EQ experience you can find so shut up and call it classic', so the bar has been and will continue to be moved based on the staff's reactions to a select few, but usually very vocal, individual's actions (quest exp nerf just one recent example). I think many people forget that and try to reconcile things as if this was a for-profit corporate run project with some sort of oversight and accountability. The fact that accounts are free here alone changes how the game is fundamentally played. It would be wise to remember that if the folks running these servers wanted things to be different they would be, because they have the final say on what is allowed or not and the ability to make it difficult for someone to continue to play here.

[Clazxiss]

No one is crawling it on blue or green either, they are sitting in one spot pulling mobs for hours like any other xp group ever. On green at primetime you can often walk from the zone in all the way to the dock without aggro.

This isn't about classic ZEM, which may actually be accurate. Its about one zone being the only place anyone will consider for xp pick up groups, which is a non classic experience.

Your last paragraph is the core issue that has faced EQ since it's live launch. If the ZEM changes were removed from the Hole, people would just go monopolize the next best zone. I suppose that would be considered, classic?

[Fammaden]

Your last paragraph is the core issue that has faced EQ since it's live launch. If the ZEM changes were removed from the Hole, people would just go monopolize the next best zone. I suppose that would be considered, classic?

Well they would move from one zone to two zones most likely, KC and Seb. Which is more classic Kunark behavior than everyone who wants group xp piling into the Hole for ten levels. And those zones are actually on Kunark.

The Hole is a great zone but the new ZEM is simply overkill to me. It trivializes the leveling experience and turns all of the 50+ leveling grind into a single zone game. Yes there will always be a most popular place, but previously there was at least a little spread with enough people xping in KC, Chardok, Seb that you could reliably hope to get a pick up group in those places. Many people won't be 60 by the time we get Velious and I could have imagined Velks becoming a pick up group spot like in the old days but not now with the Hole becoming the only place to level.

[loramin]

Your last paragraph is the core issue that has faced EQ since it's live launch. If the ZEM changes were removed from the Hole, people would just go monopolize the next best zone. I suppose that would be considered, classic?

This is the beauty of "dark" ZEM changes, ie. ZEM changes made without informing the player base. Such changes might actually be 100% classic (if they were, we players wouldn't have known, right?) Actually, with Show EQ, maybe we would have ... but even if Verant wasn't periodically/secretly changing ZEMs without telling us ... that certainly seems like a very Verant thing to do.

The best solution in my mind is for staff to say "we're going to change ZEMs, secretly and periodically", and then say nothing more. Hell, they could even say that and not actually do it! I can all but guarantee that simply saying it would be enough that, after every patch, we'd have multiple threads to the effect of "does it feel like the Hole's XP is lower post-patch?" :)

Players hunting the mythical "best XP zone" (again, even if the staff never actually made one) would drive adoption of alternate dungeons ... or at least would do so more than the current system.

[Man0warr]

Well they would move from one zone to two zones most likely, KC and Seb. Which is more classic Kunark behavior than everyone who wants group xp piling into the Hole for ten levels. And those zones are actually on Kunark.

The Hole is a great zone but the new ZEM is simply overkill to me. It trivializes the leveling experience and turns all of the 50+ leveling grind into a single zone game. Yes there will always be a most popular place, but previously there was at least a little spread with enough people xping in KC, Chardok, Seb that you could reliably hope to get a pick up group in those places. Many people won't be 60 by the time we get Velious and I could have imagined Velks becoming a pick up group spot like in the old days but not now with the Hole becoming the only place to level.

I don't see the issue with that though. The biggest reason Seb and HS aren't seeing more play is the soulbind keys. KC and Seb have also always sucked for actually leveling - their ZEMs have always sucked like Lower Guk and Sol B - they are loot zones.

Why is it so bad for the Hole to be the best exp? It has mostly bad loot drops but it's fantastic for exp because you can fit 10-12 groups in there without people stepping on each other's toes. If you nerf the Hole people will just go back to the next easiest non-Kunark option like Perma, Neriak Arena, etc. People will always gravitate towards the best combination of ZEM and Loot, no matter what you change them to.

[Sizar]

Can we just change the zem's to 85-100 across the board and call it a day? Simple, easy

[Grakken]

Clearly, the answer is to make zones have variable ZEM inversely proportional to the population of people in the zone.

[BlackBellamy]

Nerf the hole by 75%? ok

One month after Velious: (https://everquest.allakhazam.com/editorial/011401_EQ_Producers_letter.html)

The Hole increased by 25%

Why don't we just have it at whatever it was before it was increased by 25% in January 2001?

[Vizax_Xaziv]

Well they would move from one zone to two zones most likely, KC and Seb. Which is more classic Kunark behavior than everyone who wants group xp piling into the Hole for ten levels. And those zones are actually on Kunark.

The Hole is a great zone but the new ZEM is simply overkill to me. It trivializes the leveling experience and turns all of the 50+ leveling grind into a single zone game. Yes there will always be a most popular place, but previously there was at least a little spread with enough people xping in KC, Chardok, Seb that you could reliably hope to get a pick up group in those places. Many people won't be 60 by the time we get Velious and I could have imagined Velks becoming a pick up group spot like in the old days but not now with the Hole becoming the only place to level.
It's gonna be horseshit when they nerf it now, after the neckbeards have all leveled their main and alts to 60 in the hole.

[Vizax_Xaziv]

Can we just change the zem's to 85-100 across the board and call it a day? Simple, easy

This is kinda my thinking TBH.

[cd288]

This is kinda my thinking TBH.

So then people would only go to the zones with the best loot and safest/most efficient xp spawns

[Faraohjaelm]

I don't mind current ZEMs. I enjoy that there are empty zones where I can grind in peace. I don't care if I get 20% less xp.

[Swish]

I don't mind current ZEMs. I enjoy that there are empty zones where I can grind in peace. I don't care if I get 20% less xp.

Very much this. Quiet zones are good.

Would recommend people actually get into Nurga/Droga/other quiet zones to adventure if they want to do something different.