[Messianic]

I personally think xp rates are identical, if not almost exactly the same, as they were on live during the comparable era. Why? I had plenty of RL friends who played a variety of classes - one Ogre SK, one Troll Shaman, one High Elf Magician, and myself, a human monk.

I saw the magician blow us all away in levels. He did play slightly more, but his xp gain and soloing ease made it a joke for him to pass us. The Shaman had a great deal of trouble until 24-34ish, when his speed started to ramp up. I leveled the slowest at first, being addicted to alts (as I am here), and played around a bit. However, once I pulled together enough cash from trading wisely and manufacturing items, I twinked the garbage out of my monk and burned through levels.

One concrete example is the Troll Shaman - he camped Osargen in HK from 24 to 27-29 (don't remember exactly). The exp he reported at the time in terms of bubbles and general exp rate was nearly identical to when my erudite wizard on this server camped him for a while (adjusting for exp penalties)

If there is some giant difference, i must be completely blind and can't see it.


My theory? Knowledge about how the first 2-3 years of everquest functioned, the classes who have solo advantages, the best places to solo, the best NPCs to camp, the best gear to use - the knowledge we have now about all of these things is immeasurably higher than what it was.


Most of the people who play this game have already done the group-route in 1999 or thereafter. We've grouped in lguk, and Sol B until we were blue in the face, so it's not a novelty to do what we did in 1999/2000. Quit complaining about group exp - you have to face the fact that unless you're in a group that knows what it's doing and you're in the right place in the right zone, solo exp is often faster than group exp.

If you genuinely play for a group experience instead of a solo grinding/Raiding experience, there's no reason to complain anyhow, and you need to take the bad with the good. Quit whining that other playstyles have an advantage. It shouldn't matter to you that some mage camping guards in HK levels faster than you - his leveling doesn't pick your pocket or break your leg.

Forcing people to group won't help either, nor would it be "classic." Sorry, you can't re-create a lack of knowledge that led people to group more often in classic without distorting exp mechanics and therefore making it less "classic."