So, has anyone tried out the "hot spots" heralded in yesterday's patch message? What was your experience (both in terms of the xp bar and the zone itself)?
After logging in last night, I decided to make a run to Nadox since I already knew roughly how much xp I got in the zone and it'd be a good judge. I was a little worried when I saw 40+ people in Gunthak and then about 25 people in Nadox. The only time I ever saw more than five people in Nadox before was for Innoruuk raids. However, Nadox is a pretty big zone when you get down to it and the groups were mostly on the Gunthak side (Sentinal room, firepit, trap door, Nautilus room and someone pulling from U. Luggalds for the Pureblood drops). Given that the route to Hate's Fury was generating more trains than Umbral Plains does, I decided to just do the rectangular troll room room off of U. Luggalds.
Experience was... better. It wasn't amazing and it wasn't like going to Padual at lvl 64, but four clearings of the room (about five lvl 55 mobs, a lvl 57 and a lvl 58) got me half a yellow in 64. I could have pulled more, but I didn't want to be a pest and, besides, my AEing skills were rusty and I almost got my clock cleaned the first kite as it was The nice thing actually was the company. A bit of chatter about the LoY spell quests or people offering quest drops, some talk about the xp, etc. No fighting for camps or pulls but then again, like I said, Nadox is a bigger zone than I think people give it credit for. It was still BYOG as far as I could tell. I saw one or two LFGs, but I don't think they ever got picked up into groups.
I don't know if this Hot Spot thing will really change things; I expect after the weekend people will filter back into HHK, PoJ, Dawnshroud, PoV or wherever the kids are going these days but it might generate some return traffic to a few of the zones.