gem drops

[compulsion]

I am posting this mostly out of curiosity, for people who have more guild leading and PvE experience than myself.

On this server I have seen drops from dino, bugs, and rarely a drop in Hate. Despite usually being in the "xp group", I have not seen 1 gem from Fear or Sky. Gem prices are through the roof, and there are plenty of established 60s who are still trying to get a decent resist set.

What I don't understand is, if this server has the same drops as on live, why were gems so common and cheap in on live servers. As a PK on RZ I had no problem collecting a very good resist set from item loot alone. I don't even remember JC stuff being of any significant value at all. When I rerolled for the SZ release, after our first Vox kill and just a few planar raids, diamond and bd gear was being distributed by the guild. At the time I was the 3rd of my class to hit 60, and we were the first raiders for our team, not the recipients of leftover goods.

Look up diamond on allakhazam and you will find several posts from 2001 stating that these gems drop from several high level encounters in several zones, and specifically naming imps, giants, and higher level guk mobs as having a chance to drop them. This period specific evidence also aligns with my personal experience that the various gems were not very rare on live. I have not found any pre-Velious information on drop rates, unfortunately, so for that I am just going on memory.

So, if you lead a guild, ran a guild bank, or just have a wealth of PvE experience from live, I'm really curious to hear your take on the subject.