This isnt even a little bit true lol. There are plenty of people who have different routes. Just started my 2nd character and my necro did CB then solo or duo in oasis, SK, and lake rathe. I'm getting 2 bubs an hour still at level 21 soloing open world mobs which is more than I ever got in uguk on my rogue or even HHK gobbos.

Also, "everyone" could not have possibly done HHK goblins because literally only one group at a time can farm that for good xp.

I had to move around a bit for loot cause I rolled a warrior.

I soloed in innothule/sro till 7ish
grouped in sro till 10-11
briefly went to nro to get a dragoon dirk, then did a little befallen after till around 13-14
uguk till high teens
highpass/uguk till low 20s
sola mostly from like 22-44 to get them loots. Also had one HHK goblin group and the ocassional uguk/lguk group thrown in there
44-50 HHK nobles/bards

So out of 40 levels beyond level 10 you did about 15 of them in HHK or UGuk. Add in sola and it's 3 zones, the ones I called out, for basically 14-50 for you.

Sounds about right. Also obviously not everyone followed this path. To the other poster I'm just saying, pretty much everyone did who is already 40+. True classic EQ was a real struggle to make 50. There was no exp treadmill and it had nothing to do with "not knowing the spots."

The evidence is all there. It's sad to see how many people will hit 50 and bring alts along within a couple months of release due to this unclassic ZEM. I'm already 50 with 2 alts above 20. Game is more fun when the server is overcrowded and painfully slow. Classic. I'd really rather not be progressing this fast but I am a min/maxer so I will. I'd just prefer to min/max in a more classic environment and classic pace but whatever glitches are going to be left in I'll abuse while advocating for their removal.

The main exp hurdle for classic was just everywhere being crowded tbh. Also, i remember a lot of people exping in zones that no one goes to on P99 like cazicthule.

qft

I tried HHK but it was a fucking mess. I'll be 50 in a few days and did not touch that zone besides killing 1 guard. The nobles are camped to shit, the guards are so contested it's a nightmare. Depends on your class of course but I have not touched HHK 40+ and I don't really play that many hours and I'm almost 50, sure took me a month but did not play out of my mind too much. HHK is the best ZEM and XP if you can get the camps but getting the camps can be a freaking bottomless pit. I am sure there are some people who would wait 4-5 hours for nobles instead of getting 3-4y in those 4-5 hours in another camp and get their 3-4y in 2 hours instead at nobles, I just am not one to sit and wait for the camp.

Listen the original guy with the ogre avatar worded his statement in a way that naturally makes people want to prove him wrong. The main point is that upperguk and hhk from a competitive standpoint(sounds silly but hopefully you get the point) are just better than other alternatives. Things like crushbone, unrest, sol a, najena, befallen are also obviously ridiculous as well.

This is the core problem, the debate is not over whether you can level off different paths. Right now you have s tier zones/camps, a tier, b tier, and then the rest. Something like aviaks in south karana is really a b tier camp but it can often be contested just because it's something decent.

Right now only a small percentage of the game world is actually being used.

Yeah, I played from phase 4 beta through Kunark, and Cazic was HUGELY popular in vanilla. Everyone wanted Rubicite back then.

But where is the "classic mystery" when we all know where the current high ZEM zones are? Everyone knows that CB, Befallen, and Kurns have absurd ZEMs. Everyone knows HHK, Unrest, and Guk have great ZEMs as well, etc. etc. Now, we might not know the exact numerical value, but we know that the boosts are there; I've tested it before on multiple characters (ensuring that each character doesn't have a different XP boost/penalty than the others) and the EXP absolutely moves materially faster in those zones versus killing a level equivalent mob in another non-ZEM boost zone. The only one I'm still unsure of is LOIO and whether it actually has a penalty or not.

In general the wiki values match the in game values pretty closely. He brings up the mystery aspect every thread and it just derails the conversation and gets us nowhere.