It's just a product of the fact that the server has been in Velious for like two years now. There's not enough players still levelling to where you can expect groups in the less convenient zones. There's a big difference in the quality of levelling zones, and it's no coincidence that places like Split Paw and Crystal Caverns aren't used: they kinda suck to play in. Bumping up the ZEM won't really change that fact.
There's a reason that the default levelling route is Unrest -> Mistmoore -> Highkeep -> Mistmoore castle -> City of Mist -> Karnor's. They're all within a short distance of a port, they're all outdoor zones so you can use any spells there, and they're mostly melee mobs. The rest of the dungeons are such a hassle because you have to fight a bunch of shaman and wizard mobs, can't use Harmony to pull, and can't train out when things go wrong because you don't have SoW. As long as there aren't so many players levelling that they have to go wherever there's mobs available, people won't choose to go where it sucks unless you literally double the XP gained there, and then it makes the levelling experience so trivial that it goes against the spirit of the game, as well as turning these zones into a toxic haven for professional PLers.
This sort of issue is supposed to be relieved by a fixed schedule of server releases that prevent a situation where the latest server has been stuck in Velious for so long that the entire levelling population within any given level range can pretty much fit inside one zone. Then they'll always just choose the most convenient one. There's just no reason to go to RunnyEye and hope against all odds that there's other people there, or bring your own group which then falls apart as soon as people have to go eat dinner and it turns out that it's a giant hassle to find replacements when they all have to be ported in.
It's actually kind of a joke for P99 to have had only two generations of servers in like fourteen years. Staff promised otherwise and simply didn't deliver. The problem outlined by OP is a direct consequence of staff's neglect of the project, and there's just no two ways about it. There's no excuse for P99 being on just its second iteration (not counting red) since 2009.
|