The April update includes a fix to a long-time bug where the out-of-combat regen timer didn't affect players after zoning. The timer would continue to display, but while sitting, you would still have out-of-combat regen, and abilities that required you to be out of combat could be used (such as Tranquil Blessings). We wanted to share more information about why this is happening now, and (? Invite feedback/discussion from players?)
In 2006, The Serpent’s Spine expansion added out-of-combat regen as a way to reduce downtime for players. Around 2016, a bug was introduced that caused the out-of-combat timer to no longer apply to you after zoning. This bug was known and tracked, but a conscious decision was made not to fix it because of other bugs with out-of-combat regen, such as timers being extended while hovering after death, timers being extended from spells/buffs cast by other players when they weren’t supposed to, and the timer not always displaying correctly. In the past few years, the remaining bugs with the out-of-combat regen timer have been fixed. We also made a change to newer TLP servers to allow out-of-combat regen earlier than The Serpent’s Spine, first in Gates of Discord and later relaxing it to classic.
Since then, some behaviors that have become more encouraged and widespread by the existence of this bug include evacuating after raid events and camping in/out during or after events to avoid the timer. Circumventing the timer by zoning or camping was never an intended behavior of the out-of-combat regen system.
Moving forward, we plan to continue discussing how this system can be improved or adjusted to alleviate some of the concerns that have been brought up. We are planning to leave the timer as-is for the April update, but welcome any feedback, ideas, and concerns you have about this change or how downtime in EQ can be reduced without encouraging unintended behavior.