Everquest

From the patch message:

- Many keyed zones from the Ruins of Kunark, Scars of Velious, Shadows of Luclin, Planes of Power, Gates of Discord, Omens of War, Depths of Darkhollow, and Prophecy of Ro have had their key/flag requirements modified.  All players that have obtained the key/flag will still be allowed entry into the zones, as will players that have met minimum level requirements for the zones.  The zones and minimum level requirements are as follows:*

*- Required Level 46 -
The Howling Stones
Old Sebilis
Skyshrine to Cobalt Scar*

*- Required Level 55 -
Sleeper's Tomb
Veeshan's Peak
Vex Thal
Locked areas of the Temple of Ssraeshza*

*- Required level 57 -
Bastion of Thunder
Halls of Honor
The Temple of Marr
Tower of Solusek Ro
Drunder, The Fortress of Zek*

*- Required Level 60 -
Plane of Water
Plane of Air
Plane of Fire
Plane of Earth
Ikkinz
Uqua
Yxtta
Kodtaz*

*- Required Level 62 -
Plane of Time
Inktuta
Qvic*

*- Required Level 65 -
Txevu
Tacvi*

*- Required Level 68 -
Anquish*

*- Required Level 70 -
Dreadspire
Demiplane of Blood*

*- Required Level 72 -
Theater of Blood
Deathknell*

I don't understand why the elemental planes have a level 60 requirement?  Back in the day, to fight in these planes you needed to be level 65 with full raid gear.

Have players at level 60 got access to much better gear now, or are characters stronger?  Or what?

I haven't played for a while but these changes are interesting, if a little puzzling to me.

i can see why they did it but my god  think of how hard i worked for my keys an flags it gives me shviers lookin at this lol..

i think lvl 60 is a good lvl for them to enter ..but lvl 62 for potime i dont understand unless they lowered all the requirements for gear...all a person had to be was lvl 46 to enter any of the planes if they were flagged, potime was 65 no matter the case ..i had a few low 50s flagged up to pofire, useless since they couldnt use the gear was all lvl 61+ to use

Originally posted by Recant

I don't understand why the elemental planes have a level 60 requirement?  Back in the day, to fight in these planes you needed to be level 65 with full raid gear.

Have players at level 60 got access to much better gear now, or are characters stronger?  Or what?

I haven't played for a while but these changes are interesting, if a little puzzling to me.

you can buy gear in bazaar better then potime gear when i stopped playin last year

some of these keys part of the fun was getting them.. but others, Vex Thall key- which was a true pain in the ass is understandable.

I knew it would be a matter of time, I just didn't realize it would have taken this long.

Seriously.  Look at the way Blizzard handle things for WoW, they remove the access requirements for dungeons that are current.  At a time when, people actually have a reason to visit these places.  The only downside to this is you piss off the people at the high end who worked for the access, but then even in EQ, this is only a small percentage of the population.

I guess this demonstrates the difference between the two developers, SOE cater specifically for the hardcore minority, Blizzard do the best for both imo.  With the exception of a few rare items there's little need to visit most of these zones, and there hasn't been for years.

After PoP the only reason I would need to visit VT was to get the skeleton illusion item, which is complete fluff.

On the other hand, there are a good number of people in smaller guilds who haven't been to Demiplane or Theatre of Blood or Deathknell or even Anguish. I saw a pick-up raid to Anguish forming the other day. It might be too little too late, but I do hope this gives a little more life to smaller guilds who aren't still working on old content and to returning or new players who may not otherwise be able to take advantage of opportunities to see some of those places.

Totally against my New Year's resolution and my better judgement, I returned to EQ not too long ago. I started a new character on Bristlebane, and I have been having a really good time. The thought that I can go those places (if the chance arises) by merely leveling is a relief. I do feel a little bad for people who got their access the old fashioned way, but I certainly don't want to do all that crap all over again myself. And it is pretty unlikely that I'd find enough other people interested to help me get my keys and flags anyway.

commentary from EQ Dev, Rashere
http://forums.station.sony.com/eq/posts/list.m?topic_id=130814

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We're just looking for a good point that we can draw the line and say "this is old content". We took a general look at when group gear in the latest expansion is as good or better than raid gear in a past expansion and that was with PoR where top end group gear in SoF is as good or better than top end raid gear of that expansion (for the most part...you can always find aspects of it that will be better on the raid level due to the nature of raid gear). So, we're calling the last 3 expansions "current", which would be back to TSS right now, and opening up everything before that.

Removing the flags isn't going to make the content itself easier, with the exception of allowing folks to bypass some poorly tuned content that ends up being roadblocks. Just because you can get to more content doesn't meant you can beat it, but by opening up the flags it should allow those guilds who are still raiding in old content the ability to field higher numbers for that content since they don't have to worry about people repeatedly showing up for flagging events, something which wears down attendance numbers for even the most hardcore guilds. It also allows non-raiders who want to try raiding a better opportunity to do so since they could join a mid-tier raiding guild in older content without having to jump through all the flagging hoops that would usually be required.

Rashere

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