I distinctly remember knowing as fact that Kunark had a +20% xp bonus across the whole expansion to get people to buy it. Sarnak fort was da bomb through 20s on live. Unrest and Upper Guk were totally ditched.

I remember the Overthere being a heavily used zone for grouping in the 30s. Chain pulling constantly but those red con sabertooth tigers were nasty!

And yet for years here many players insisted that OT was full of swarm kiting bards in Classic ;) It's funny how people's memories of classic shift from reality when they want to justify something.

I remember seeing the odd swarm kite going on, but I think with so many groups it was hard for them to find pulls. FM and SF (ramp) zone lines I remember being popular and the braids being a nice addition for XP/faction for those that could use them. And I know it was in the 30s because I always remember it being the point where I could stop staring at the book medding. :D

anyone whos going to kunark exp pre 53 is doin it wrong.

Is there a current list of ZEM by zone? Im pretty sure the wiki info is out of date since the last time they patched the ZEM's.
Also, I remember there being a patch that significantly upped group exp based on the number of people in your group, 2 in a group (Duo) +5 exp, 3 in a group (Trio) +7 exp, so that it became much more favorable to group and get XP. My mage on 51 can currently kill 1-3 mobs and get 1% exp. Then I grouped for almost 4 hours in the same zone, I was getting 1% xp every 11-12 kills. Group XP never used to suck that hard, we were all the same level too.
There are soo many classes that do not want to group because soloing is currently far superior, that definitely was never the case on live. I believe the group XP mods were added to off set certain class xp penalties, so if you had multiple group members with xp penalties, those penalties wouldn't pile up/stack and take the whole group down like it does.
You want to increase player interaction, this is something that needs addressing ASAP.

I think this may be a case where one server's culture may have differed from another's. My own recollection from the original game was that there were numerous classes that had a reputation for being able to level faster when solo compared to grouping. Necromancer, Druid, Magician, and to a lesser extent Wizard all come to mind. Enchanter is the big outlier on P1999 because charm was nowhere near as heavily-used in the original game as it is here. P1999 (well, at least Blue) did indeed use era-appropriate group bonuses, but those bonuses are much less than the group bonuses from later game eras.

Lake of Ill omen has never been a very popular grouping zone on P1999. I find that unfortunate given the zone's long-term popularity in the original game.

Danth

on retail it had 24 thousand times more mobs by the windmill , enough to support like 5 groups

in this thread, people who dont play green discussing where to level

there were no swarm kiting bards anywhere on classic / live because internet / computers couldnt handle it, you would die immediately

as for exp bonus, kunark was the latest expansion, people ran there because it was NEW

no one cared about ZEM or even knew it was a thing, sarnak fort was packed because it had tons of mobs and it was cool.

Same with lake of ill omen and other spots like karnors / dl even the warslicks woods giant fort and FM Giant fort was super cool and still is