Man, I missed the Gates of Discord discussion. I love Gates of Discord discussion!
Iirc, Gates of Discord and Omens of War started off at the same expansion before being divided up into separate expansions. Gates may have been designed around level 70 play - which would make sense as to why mid-tier 6man content was hitting as hard as Plane of Time raid encounters (in terms of raw numeric value; not factoring in ATK/rate obviously).
EQ pumped out expansions q6-12 months, so my guess is that it was too late in the development cycle to go back and adjust most content back to level 65. EQ didn't really have players beta test much prior to pumping out the expansion either. I don't recall guilds being asked to test encounters until LDoN. And even then, it was usually the first tier. We (a guild one-daying PoTime) had tested one of the Vex Thal - level Ruj Raids in LDoN (as opposed to Elemental or PoTime level). For GoD, I think we were asked to test Ikkinz 1 or 2?
In retrospect, most of the tuning problems in GoD had to do with trash mobs and encounter adds hitting way too hard. In other words, adds hitting for 3k when bosses hit for 4k. Contrasted with say POP having adds hit for 1k when bosses hit for 3k. So, they may have had time to adjust the bosses damage tables, but I think adds/trash were left alone. The OG Uqua death-spawns quadded for 3k which usually meant a wipe if someone died.
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