[...]

When I was almost finished with the 6th zone I was vet 8.

No farming mobs
No AvA
No trials
No DSA.
2 or 3 pledges which don't offer much xp.
No etc.

I was gaining more than 1 vet rank per zone just doing the zone content with the exception of a couple pledges which don't offer much xp.

That works out to near vet 12 or beyond if I had kept doing just the quests. At vet 9 I started running DSA.

The OP numbers are incomplete and less to an incorrect assumption on the part of the OP. The player you quoted above us absolutely correct.

[Moderator Note: Removed moderated quote]

For newcomers to this discussion, I realize the thread is large, but please try to at least get a sense of the current discussion before making heavy handed comments about things that have already been asked and addressed. The OP uses the case of WB/dolmens to make a point about the changes to XP rewards post-1.6 that have yet to be explained by ZOS. As for the rest, thoughout the many pages of this thread, myself and others explored wildly varying accounts for where people end up doing vet content. The OP is almost 2 months old, and throughout that time, my alt is now v10, and has completed in FULL all silver and gold zones. I can at least speak from that experience, and for me, there's no doubt in my mind that XP rewards are no where close to being scaled the way they were prior to 1.6. There are others that claim the opposite, and say it's easier, and that they're ending the same content 2.5+ vet levels higher than me. Frankly, I can't explain this, as even if they were trigger happy and killed a few more mobs than I did, it doesn't seem to add up to 2.5+ million xp.

To the people that think it's fine to generalize the myriad of complaints and evidence in this and other related threads to us just being 'lazy', I know my take on the situation is that it used to be far easier prior to 1.6 to level in veteran ranks and can think of no sane reason why ZOS should be making these harder to achieve - especially when you consider that they're removing them in full in a couple of months. Originally I thought this was just a case of a bug or wrong numbers in 1.6 being pushed out, and half-expected them to just say 'whoops' and fix it. At this point, others have caught on, hence the many many threads over the past 2 months, and the fact that there is ZERO official response just makes the situation worse.

In regards to the moderation that's occurred in this thread, please follow the rules, and don't turn this into a "liar!" ... "no, you're a liar!". I would prefer to not give ZOS a dumb reason to lock this thread. It's one of two (out of over a dozen related threads) that has many views and comments, and it's easier to hold their feet to the fire via these higher visibility threads. With that said, to the moderator/s, patience has clearly worn thin because there hasn't been ANY official response to the various threads that deal with these issues. There may truly be bugs involved that result in some players having no problem with XP, and others being far behind the curve while doing the same content. The problem is that we have few options available to us other than speculation, so you've pretty much brought it upon yourselves by letting this snowball for over 2 months.

Back on track, here's some new info for the discussion. Here are the (rough) total number of quests per alliance zone. This is based on how many it takes to get the questing achievement for each zone. While this number isn't the total, it's usually very very close - off by about 2 or so quests in my experience.

AD - 200
EP - 269
DC - 233

Here is (roughly) how many quests are available to you based on which is your true alliance, doing the other alliances as silver and gold:

AD --> 269 + 233 = 502
EP --> 200 + 233 = 433
DC --> 200 + 269 = 469

Now, this is just the number of quests, and doesn't reflect the XP rewards (some are utter garbage and give 500 xp, some give 5k, some 8k, and some about 11k). But just looking at total number of quests available, I would expect an AD player to have an easier time having enough content to grab XP from than EP and DC players. This doesn't explain the wide spectrum of where people claim to finish gold at, but might at least contribute to the situation.

I know for me, personally, part of the reason these problems are so pronounced is because prior to 1.6 there were many viable alternatives to getting the XP needed. Craglorn was great (even excluding all of the exploits), you could do a vet sewers run in < 10 minutes and get about 8% a vet level, and the XP in silver/gold was either much greater for WB/delve/dolmens, or was at least more balanced to what quests would give. I know for a fact that doing every WB and dolmen in silver and gold used to give about 3 full vet levels, and after 1.6 it gives about half of one single vet level. They might have countered this by buffing quest XP (I really don't think so...), but even if that were true, it's a pretty dumb decision for them to make considering how most of the playerbase feels about it.

Channeling the inner completionist within me, my alt has done what apparently ZOS says we need to, and did full map completion for silver and gold and landed just before v10. You raised the level cap (twice, which was a poorly thought out decision) for craglorn when it wasn't necessary, and now that you've left the zone an XP wasteland because you were afraid of people getting too many champion points, myself and many other players are left with few good options to get to v14. I truly can't believe you've left craglorn the way you have for so long, and frankly I've lost the ability to even remotely defend you at this point.

wtf