Ive noticed this when playing on other servers, the hostiles here are at least 75% slower than other servers, is this the reason i have to stand around and wait for xp orbs after I kill them?

Server Lag, meet BTechnique. BTechnique, server lag.

Blame the abysmal code design from notch. There is a single CPU thread that runs the entire server, including doing all AI and mob updates for every single mob in every single loaded chunk on the server. Guy knows how to design some great games, but I wouldn't let him near a code editor.

On the bright side, the new server should help with this issue, since instead of having a bunch of slow cores, it has a few really fast cores.

Well even when the server isnt lagging before 1.0 when i was on the server they were still really slow...

I've actually found them quite dangerous immediately after a server restart really late at night when nobody is on, because they move at normal speeds. I have several hunches that the minecraft server starts to cut back on mob updates once it starts getting overloaded, and it quickly gets overloaded.

Creepers are scary as hell running at full speed! have to jump over terrain to get away

I was testing some things on my private server last night and totally forgot about them in their lag-free environment >.< I've got two giant holes in the landscape now, and died once because of them. Never forget: "That'sssss a nice inventory you got there...."