Bards kited on live in the Kunark and Velious era. You just never saw it because they did it in the most out of the way zones where nobody could seem them, cry and bring the nerf bats swinging. Most of the time, it was charm kiting, mainly because PC power and Internet bandwidth were limited, so it was not possible to pull 100+ mobs and have your PC not die or dial up connection peg out. I know some bards who had cutting edge rigs and good connections who swarm kited, but you would have been hard pressed to find one because they hid it from EVERYONE.
P99 devs are all about the classic mechanics and won't bring the nerf bats in when that's how it worked on live. The Internet has exploded since 1999 and any nimrod can websearch a million guides and videos, even bing has tons of hits. Even an ancient gaming rig and crappy Internet connection can handle the entities and bandwidth of a swarm these days. Because of this, the kiting bards aren't hiding what they are doing, so leveling groups and soloers are seeing it. Yes there are a-holes who don't care about the other XPers in a zone and yes there are bards who's only skill is kiting, but there are also bards who can fill many roles in a group and who can kite without ruining it for the XPers in the zone.
I'm looking at this big gap in the 40s where melee skills are capped. I played DPS, enchanter, tank, healer, DoTer, whatever was needed in a group on live, I do the same on P99 and I see no reason to watch my XP bar crawl along again. My in game friends will also contend that sometimes I even take them along for the XP ride
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