Well, this thread certainly got out of hand quickly.
As i've stated before, this change was made because it did not make sense from a risk vs reward based standpoint. I never said killing guards was an exploit. Nothing is stopping you from killing guards right now. The only difference is that you will level at the same speed as you would in a comparable level 30+ dungeon. Killing guards has downsides - losing valuable faction, no possibility of common/rare drops, etc. However, it also has its upsides - generally easier to kill because they are outdoors. This makes sense. Having guards spawn 4x faster did not make sense, and I believe everyone here can agree to that.
Verant made these changes back in 2000 when guard killing not only became widespread, but started to become the de-facto method of leveling up for everyone. As this was not Verant's original intention for guards, it was changed. Had guard killing became rampant in 2002 instead of 2000, Verant would have caught on then, and changed it. Same as if guard killing would have caught on in 1999, Verant would have fixed it then. I'm certain that guard killing DID occur back in 1999, but more than likely flew under the radar enough for Verant to not notice.
Bottom line is, Verant NEVER intended to guards to be hunted at 4x the speed of a dungeon. When they noticed that this was happening, it was changed. Realistically, guards should never have been spawning 4x faster on P1999, as it was imbalancing from a leveling viewpoint, and also to the in-game economy. Thats why it was changed now, even though we were a little late to catch on. There is no strange "we are going out of order to the timeline!!!!!!!!!" conspiracy going on.
One thing you guys need to realize is that we all have lives - families, jobs, school, etc. We work on this server in our free time. And because we spend our free time working on this server, it leaves us with little to no time to actually PLAY on this server. Believe it or not, most of us devs do not have the time to actually sit back and enjoy P1999. So take a deep breath, relax, and enjoy P1999 if you like. We certainly aren't forcing your hand to play.
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