John and I were talking about the best way to clean up some of these spawns that shouldn't be there (like the 50 nodes of lumber in a general area). I remembered LE saying that "areas" are pretty customizable, or will be. I think you were referring to the areas like "You have discovered <insert name here>!". So I began thinking, and you may be able to answer this best LE, are spawns that don't seem to have a specific spawn spot set to spawn in an area like you have mentioned before? Kind of like this?

And those 3 wandering deer are set to spawn anywhere within that red area whenever there are less than 3 of those deer?
If this is the case then we can simply /spawn remove any deer that aren't needed in that area and then somehow set those 3 deer to spawn within that area.
Otherwise, won't we have to collect every single spawn point those three deer could possibly have and use /spawn combine? Which seems drastic.
Just a theory I had, lol.

There are currently no "area" at all defined, let alone wandernig areas. Best you can do is create a spawn script with some fancy math that tells the mob to randomly wander from confined x,y,z coords.
As we discussed for cleanup. If you zone in and see 1,200 deer in a 20x20 square, please do not use /spawn combine 20 to put them all into 1 spawn group. In fact, "deer" specifically have hardly anything unique about them on the Queen's Island. They are either different sizes, different names, tainted, or dead. So anything extra, /spawn remove.
Would I like to see definable areas? Yes indeedy. But that's likely a feature for later.
Coming up with a unified way that we all create our spawngroups is paramount. I think we're close to solidifying this. Just a few concerns still unaddressed, and we'll be set.

John Adams wrote:There are currently no "area" at all defined, let alone wandernig areas. Best you can do is create a spawn script with some fancy math that tells the mob to randomly wander from confined x,y,z coords.

Yes I know that, I was just asking for future planning.

John Adams wrote:As we discussed for cleanup. If you zone in and see 1,200 deer in a 20x20 square, please do not use /spawn combine 20 to put them all into 1 spawn group.

But then wouldn't that get all the other spawns in that radius of 20 like harvestables and such? I was looking at the placeholders table of your DB tool and there are shinies mixed with deer mixed with lumber lol.
*EDIT*
DOH, /slap forehead. Read the "please do not" as a "please do" hehe. Okay, sounds good.

Yeah, as I mentioned initially, Zcoretri and I were playing around with the new command, and likely combined a little too much. It will take a manual effort to fix those things, but it shouldn't be too much.
Also, I have a feature request in to prohibit combining like-typed entities when using /spawn combine [radius] (ie., combining NPCs with Objects with Signs = no no), but still allow you to select your initial spawn, and add any type manually (add).
I learned this when I almost combined 5 sapswills, the blademaster, some skellies, a tent and some idols.

Well I don't know about areas, but spawn location variances were designed into World. if you look in the zonespawns table, the *_offset fields are for setting up spawns locations that can be slightly variable. If you put something in the field, it should add a random value up to your offset to the spawn value. I'm not entirely sure that I ever implemented that yet, but that is the way I designed it. Either way let me know if this is what you are looking for and if it needs fixing

I always thought that spawns were based on a limited number restricted to one area. For example, only 20 goblins at most would be allowed to roam the area outside the camp gates, and only 1 big kahuna goblin (can't recall name) spawns in a specific point around the tent area and isn't allowed to roam (unless chasing a character).
Is this how the Emu is set up, and is it possible to set a spawn frequency (I would like to see 20 goblins up at all times, as soon as one dies then another repops).

I don't see why not. You can create 20 spawngroups, each with 1 gobbie in it. Then set the respawn to 1 second or whatever. Soon as it dies, it's replacement is immediately popped at the original coords.
As for areas, no. I don't think you can define a box and say "keep x mobs in this box at all times". I'm sure that's the illusion on the player end in Live, but I am sure it is all spawn control.