“The biggest change in Chains of Eternity is the removal of Group XP Split. Now, you are no longer penalized for grouping!”
EQ2 Wire, Chains of Eternity FAQ
In answer to the question “Have there been any changes to Adventure XP in this expansion?” we find that people won’t be punished for grouping… as much. There are a lot of issues when trying to adventure as a group in EQII, as we found out with our regular Saturday night team.
Everybody facing their own way, symbolic of our time there
But at least actual adventure experience… which can be routed into alternate advancement… won’t be on the list any more.
Tell me again, how was this game was supposed to be the successor to EverQuest?
The Ancient Gaming Noob 
There was a de facto xp penalty in Everquest, too, in that at no point did two people get 2×100% xp for a kill etc. There was a group “bonus” but it added up to far less than the solo xp would have been.
The wrinkle in EQ, of course, was that you needed a group to be able to kill the mob in the first place! Without one you’d get 100% alright – of the xp loss when you died.
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EQ1 also had a ZEM — zone experience modifier — which was low in outdoor zones and high in dungeons. XP in EQ1 was so slow (as we all know) that there was a HUGE incentive to find a dungeon and get in a group if leveling was something that was important for you.
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Also, certain races got xp bonuses and certain races got xp penalties to offset other racial advantages. Nobody was ever really happy about EQ1’s xp curve, except for quad-kiting halfling druids, who got pretty much every conceivable bonus.
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I think I was being too subtle in just including a link to all of the troubles our group had in our venture into EQII. The group exp penalty was such a minor thing that I don’t think we even noticed given all the other trouble we had trying to keep a group together on the same quest chain.
The rub is that grouping gave you an advantage in EQ, even in simple overland play. In fact, it was practically required. In EQII, having a group for questing is a hindrance.
@BH – I recall Najena having a very favorable exp modifier back in the day.
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How is SOE still in business…
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…by keeping expenses low.
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EQII is really their attempt at an “all things to all people” MMO. It has a mind boggling amount of features. It is like a science experiment at this point. Hell, it even has PLEX. Would you have picked EQII as a game likely to take a feature from EVE?
But that feature explosion routine is both its strength and weakness. For everything I like, and there is a ton I like about the game, there are always two things that annoy me. That is a lot of annoyance to overcome.
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For all the features EQ2 offers, I still prefer EQ1. It never made sense to me in any MMO that soloing would be more productive than grouping. Not to say soloing ought not to be possible and even easy depending on the title, but no way – to my way of thinking – should soloing net you better XP, questing, loot, etc.
Because let’s face it – for most of us, unless we’re prodded and/or incentivized to have fun with others, will revert to soloing most of the time, if it is the path of least resistance. I’ve done this many a time in numerous games. I solo without making the often minor effort to group, until it becomes harder to solo than group. And while I can continue soloing if I feel like that kind of challenge, or don’t have time to group, etc, I almost always end up having greater fun in an MMO while grouped.
It has however occurred to me that part of the reason soloing in most MMOs isn’t as fun, is because solo content is quite simply lacklustre compared to solo games like Baldur’s Gate and Diablo. I mean who would really play an MMO if it were a 100% solo experience – say on your own private closed server? It might be fun for a brief while, but it’s other players that MMO devs truly rely on to make the fun for us, through random encounters, grouping, guilds, etc.
MMO quests, missions, raids, PvP (think playing vs bots instead), achievements – they _all_ lose the fun factor without other players. At least as such things stand. Maybe if MMO devs took a leaf from single player games and made the content more fun without needing others to add the fun… oh, SWTOR… right. Well, that didn’t work either.
Yep – when you get down to it, even if it’s only to show off or enjoy the feeling of a vibrant alive world and other such indirect multiplay, MMOs _need_ other players to be fun. Else what is the point? I might as well play Diablo II LoD instead.
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