This is true. Fear only works in a select few zones IIRC. Also, fear only works on animals. Wow, it must have taken forever on eqlive with the slim zone pickings for that. Here, many rangers opt for the easy method of snare kiting. You can easily give that a shot as long as you can afford the arrows(untill you get a summoning clicky)
It is possible but not the best route of EXP imo. Areas such as southern badlands let you fear kite animals, but it only lasts a handful of seconds and meleeing a fleeing mob is a pain (unless its been recently changed). For the best solo results do as Yala said: Buy a crapton (2+ bags) full of 1 dmg arrows, and just snare bowkite. You'll have to make trips every so often to a fletcher but the money you make from exping will cover it (its not really that expensive). Then either buy or raid for a Huntsmans Bracer (drops from Enforcer Husrag in Stormkeep) for summon arrows, then get Endless Quiver . I solo'd well into my 60's this way and it went pretty fast considering it was solo.
The biggest thing that helps rangers solo here is the amazing damage bows do even at low levels. It's not limited to rangers also, my warrior gets very decent damage from a simple store bought bow.
on live i did dawnshroud til late 30's, then iceclad ocean, then east wastes, especially the huts with the dwarf ghost. the named dog that spawned there was blue til 51. also many of the walruses and the mammoths were blue til later in levels. I then returned to dawnshroud and did hoppers til 54 or 55.
other than that, it's kinda fuzzy, been a long time