LDoN were great for level-grinding. (and fun, more challenging)

40% ? That's pretty good for 1 hour in hell level. That's 80% non hell level.

Am I missing something/doing something wrong? I don't think I have ever gotten close to that fast exp. PM please and send advice.

Lol, thanks for that. :D

Back on topic, keep in mind that there are always a ton of options, unless you must have that ZEM, ideal group, or prefer the crowded zone progression. I mostly solo due to my schedule, but grouping is a blast as well; especially if you are not concerned about min/max, exp gain per mob, etc.

And yes, grouping is where you learn to play your class well. That is why oddball group combinations can be the most rewarding. Ask a druid or necro that loves the group dynamic what they bring to the table (answer: quite a bit!).

He's very well twinked, I am betting he could have gone even faster e.g. soloing in guktop.

When you are soloing, there are minor inefficiencies that pop up. E.g. medding at fm because you are tabbed out and watching midget porn, waiting for mobs, running around finding mobs, not casting the right spell at the right time etc.

Well, when you get a bunch of people together, these issues start conflating and compounding (one inefficiency causes another causes another and so forth). It's just inevitable. A duo is at the point where specialization benefits more than these inefficiencies penalize, but it is rarely true for a full group.

Also if you have some classes like wizard or most druids it is essentially welfare. They cant pull their own weight so you are basically subsidizing their exp gain. It is the same with gear and twinks.

Short answer: it depends.

Everything depends on what zone, camp, group member levels. I have found generally xp is better in a good group than solo. Def more fun. There’s no rush to the top. Once you get there you’ll find you’re on the bottom.

XP too slow?
 

Try red99, brother - The exp is natively faster than blue, you get an additional bonus for each member in group, meaning you can even leech exp afk sometimes and people won't mind as long as you aren't known for making a habit of it. Also, camps are open for the taking - there are no waitlists, and with red's pop being as low as it is (owing to summer and the active Rise of Zek server pulling some players out) there's hardly even any pvp to interfere.

Lastly, and most importantly - Red needs people. The horror stories about griefers and snobby über guilds are dated - it used to be more like that, though never to the level of the worst nightmares of Blue's rumor mill, but now griefing is really rare, and the raiding guild will accept pretty much anyone that makes it to the required level and isn't a big douche. Raiding on red is healthy, everything in Velious other than Tunare and AoW dies with regularity, and Kunark raids related to epics or specifically prized items (AoN for instance, which for various reasons is excellent in pvp.)

There are certainly some unique challenges on Red, and if you play, even though it's not like some may have you believe - you will get pvp'd at some point, you will get griefed at some point, and you have to be prepared for that. Some things in the game work differently on red as well, so there's always a bit of a learning experience (for instance, duck doesn't interrupt casts, you have to wait the entire cast bar - but you can sit and med mid-cast and stand up at the last to complete the spell) but overall it's much the same as blue, with some additional challenges and some additional perqs, and with not enough people instead of way too many. Give it some consideration, and if you do elect to come over - bring your friends! :)

- Servant - 60 CLR- Red99

All of what you said is true because no one plays on Red. I tried red, couldn't find a group anywhere. It's a ghost town that needs to be burned to the ground and rebuilt. I'm not against PVP...... I am against playing a 20 year old elf sim all by myself .

...
 

Nobody plays? Nah. There's not enough, but there are players. You don't get groups by just going to a zone you hope to hunt in and looking for a group, you get them by advertising in /ooc, by making friends and talking to them, and most especially by joining the leveling guild du jour, which is currently <Savage>. I've gained 4 levels on my characters in the last week, all 50+, and none via soloing. I didn't even hit it all that hard, just good groups with players that know wtf is going on.

It is true however that the lower levels, such as what you were experiencing, are an especially ghostly ghost town - the reason being that, if you get plugged into the social scene and thus can find a group, it takes almost no time at all to go from 0-30. CB->Unrest->Nybrights->Mistmoore. Since it's so fast to get past these levels, and since the pop is low, there's hardly anyone sub 20 on the server at any given moment. No big deal though, one good group, or an afternoon's PL session with a friendly druid, and you're golden. But your point remains - one of the challenges of the red server are the quiet levels from 1-20, and to a lesser extent the 40's can be a pain too. We just need maybe 30 more active players there, which is in part why I'm recruiting :)

- Servant

I honestly would give it a shot again, but there's just no one on Red, so I'm not going to. If there were 150 active players, I would give it a shot, but 40? No way man. I got better places to waste my time. . I seriously don't understand why Rogean and Nilbog don't wipe Red. The server pop would literally quadruple from all the new people giving it a shot if they did.