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Originally Posted by Dumesh Uhl'Belk
First, I'll describe a sample party and use a tasty pie analogy to help make the mechanics easier to understand. Then, I'll get more number and formula based for those who want the nuts and bolts.
Think of each mob that gets spawned in EQ as a pie, a very tasty pie. When a PC kills a mob, he gets to eat the pie. When players group together and kill a mob, they have to split the pie. However, through the magic of the group bonus, for each person in the group beyond the first, the pie gets a little bit bigger (2% bigger in fact) before we pull out the knife to divide the slices.
Well, how do we slice the pie? How big will each slice be?
The answer is that we measure all the pie that each player has ever eaten (his total xp). Then we cut the slices in proportions matching those relative values. So, let's say our sample group is a simple trio of Bob the Bard, Chris the Enchanter, and Diane the Druid. Since Bob came into the world of Norrath, he's eaten 150lbs of pie. Chris has had 100lbs of pie, and Diane has also eaten 100lbs of pie. Our sample group has just killed a mob. This mobs' representative pie magically grows to be 4% larger than if a solo player killed him. Then the pie is split with 3/7 of it going to Bob, 2/7 to Chris and 2/7 to Diane. The classes of these characters makes no difference at all. The only thing that determined how big each slice of the pie would be was the net total xp that each of them had earned since character creation.
But what about xp penalties, you say?
They most certainly exist. The penalties change the amount of pie that a PC has to eat to gain each level. Human warriors have to eat 90% of the pie that Human Druids have to eat to level up. Troll Shadow Knights have to eat 68% more pie than Human Druids to level up.
The important and painfully obvious consequence of this is:
A level 30 Human Monk has 20% more total xp than a level 30 human cleric.
A level 50 Ogre Shadowknight has 60% more total xp than a level 50 dwarf cleric.
Or to look at it a different way...
A human monk with 10,000,000xp is level 20.
A halfling warrior with 10,000,000xp is level 22
A troll shadowknight with 10,000,000xp is level 18
If the three characters above where to group together, they would all get equal slices of the pie.
But, But, you didn't say anything about the penalties when you talked about how xp is split!!! why not?
When the tasty pie is cut into slices for the group, the levels of the various PCs are not consulted (not directly anyway), only the xp totals for the PCs. The game code doesn't care if Bob is a human or an elf, a bard or a monk, level 10 or level 15... the game code only cares what Bob's total xp is.
What about zone modifiers?
Zone modifiers shrink or expand the pie before the slices are cut.
What does this all mean?!?
Group with people who have similar xp totals to you
Group with people who have similar xp totals to you
Group with people who have similar xp totals to you
See, it was so important, I had to say it 3 times. Please note what that really means. Race/Class combos with no penalty but who are 6 levels higher than you nerf your xp more than the hybrid who is the same level as you in most cases, especially at levels below 30. In your teens, a player 6 levels higher than you has 300 to 400% of your xp total... obviously much worse than the 140-168% of your total that a equal level hybrid has.
So, final thought...
Group with good players. An equal level group with multiple hybrids generally takes no more than 16% more kills to gain a level that a similarly leveled group that has no hydrids. Good groups kill at least 16% faster than bad groups. So, group with good players regardless of class.
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