http://forums.station.sony.com/eq/posts ... 31#1862989

As I'm sure most of you are aware, backflagging has been a hot topic for EQ for quite a while now. The complex flagging mechanisms for older expansions can make it difficult for guilds that take on new people to experience the content they are wanting to do. With the sheer amount of content between Qeynos and Crystallos it can be extremely difficult for new players to catch up with their friends in any reasonable time frame.

So, in order to make it easier for players to access appropriate content we would like to make some changes to previous flags. All of the existing flags will stay in place, as will the various quest rewards that were additional benefits to their completion. However, the following zones will have an alternate entry criteria of a minimum level. It's important to know that either the previous key OR the new minimum level is required to enter the zone, not both.

Required Level 46
The Howling Stones
Old Sebilis
Cobalt Scar

Required Level 55
Veeshan's Peak
Vex Thal
Sleeper's Tomb
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
Yxxta
Kod`taz

Required Level 60
Plane of Water
Plane of Air
Plane of Fire
Plane of Earth
Uqua
Ikkinz

Required Level 62
Plane of Time
Qvic
Inktu`Ta

Required Level 65
Txevu
Tacvi

Edit: Added Sleepers, fixed some typos.

Message edited by Rytan_the_Wyrmlord on 04/03/2008 16:05:33.

I haven't played in years, and I'm sure lots of people are happy about this, but for some reason this disappoints me .

I'm sadfaced. Part of the joy of the zones was the effort to open them.

I was particularly fond of the VP key quest..

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Kuwen Furyblades
Hunter of Memento Reejeryn
Champion of Faydark

Gay. This is too common in gaming nowadays. =(

Took me forever to run that. A week alone camping out under KC. Still, I enjoyed it.

Wow all my keys are worthless .. to bad that I cant remember my login password anymore ;/

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"Creating Havoc and Pie Since 2001!"
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The way the game is now, the only one of those keys that is still a bitch to get is VT. Every other one can be soloed in a week or piggybacked into the zone. I was surprised when I heard they were doing this, but you have to realize the majority of all those zones listed are only raided by family/non real raid guilds these days.

Depth's of Darkhollow and Dragon's of Norath are like the new velious/luclin for raid guilds starting to gear up.

Why did you use the unnecessary apostrophes?

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

Heh pretty cool... If you never saw Plane of Time, I'd suggest checking it out.

Heck I never saw Sleeper's Tomb until I went back and did the progression servers...

I have a friend that's been playing that said that there were a bunch of people in his guild that had never done any PoP so they did it one night. One night, as in the whole thing.

Nothing stupid about this move at all.

It makes what players you do have, happier and more willing to level up that 500th character, and maybe attract old vets for a week or two.

I look at the level reqs and go "huh?" personally, but I guess those old shit zones are used for nothing more than AE powergrinding nowadays so I suppose it makes sense.

Back then, those zones were key locked for a reason. 20.5 carry the 4 expansions later, the reason is no longer there. So it just makes sense to open them up completely and remove the tedium linked to getting there. It's not like its a challenge at the stage the game is at anyway.

Oh, and your Sleepers keys were made useless the day Solusek Ro died and your gear got into Fire, not because of this. It took that long to unfuck the damage Primal weapons did, and could have further done, to that game.

4/10/2008

*** Test Server Update ***

Here is a list of some of our more visible changes that have been made with this update.


*** Highlights ***

- The 10th Veteran Reward, Summon Resupply Agent, is now available!

- Type 3 augmentations are now available. Check your local Faydwer faction vendor!

- Alternate Advancement experience has been accelerated significantly for those with fewer AAs spent and will scale back down to the normal rate as more AAs are earned.

- The experience gained formulas have been modified to present players with a much smoother increase in the number of kills required to progress through a level as they gain more levels. This change has the side effect of reducing the number of kills required to gain a level in certain scenarios between levels 50 and 75.

- All 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 minimum level requirements are as follows:

Required Level 46

The Howling Stones
Old Sebilis
Skyshrine

Required Level 55

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

*** Items ***

- The engineer steamworks that work within the guardian have developed devices that help them move within the beast. Fortunately for adventurers they can be a bit absent minded about them and adventures can find them lying about.
- A vial of raging heartblood is not as vile as it was previously.


*** Spells ***

- Secrets of Faydwer's Talisman of the Puma has been renamed to Talisman of the Cougar.
- Cast time on Quellious' Word of Tranquility has been reduced from 4 to 2 seconds.
- The Adrenal Boost focus effect has been changed to Life Line, which is a mana cost reduction on Pure Life.
- The Closefisted Claw focus effect has been changed to Ethereal Breath, which is a damage increase on Ethereal Conflagration.
- Breastplate worn effects that enhanced one rank of a spell or discipline now enhance all three ranks.
- Reuse time reduction bonus on Assassin's Efficacy, Impenetrable Body, and Fit of Berserking Rage have been set to 25%.
- The Rage of Tri'Qaras effect triggered from Bulwark of Tri'Qaras is now a damage bonus that stacks with other effects.
- The recourse from the Challenge for Honor line will now appear in the bard buff box.
- The Vinelash Ensnare effect triggered from Vinelash Cascade will no longer overwrite Entrap.
- The efficiency of Secrets of Faydwer direct damage spells now scales up on higher ranks of the same spell.


*** NPC ***

- Halima in Crescent Reach can now be found in the find window.
- Henrik O`Danos no longer sells Hypericum twice.


*** Quests & Events ***

- Rylin Coil will now show and give all three tinkering mastery books for the tinkering mastery quest.


*** AA ***

- Increased the range of the Wrath of the Wild AA line to match other Damage Shield spells that Druids have.
- Increased the hitpoints and resists of all "Wards" for all classes to make them better able to resist ambient damage while performing the tasks the abilities were created for.


*** Miscellaneous ***

- Hidden corpses should now be hidden properly when entering proximity.
- The 'pop in' delay of hidden corpses when entering proximity should no longer exist.
- /who corpse should now properly display player corpses in zone.
- Changed NPC summon behavior to summon the player right in front of their current heading at 1/2 their melee range. Calculations used to determine when the NPC should summon have been made a bit more accurate. Please let us know if you experience any odd behavior when being summoned, either problems with being placed in geometry or some other location that seems incorrect. Also let us know if an NPC summons when it still seems like you are in its melee range.
- Pet Hold should no longer prevent the pet from attacking when it is ordered to attack.
- Iksar should now be able to receive a cap increase after purchasing AA.
- Corrected a problem with hate generation from skill attack abilities such as Hail of Arrows and Decimator's Volley. They were generating considerably more hate than they should and have been returned to their previous, lower hate generation.


- The EverQuest Team


AA's coming in over twice as fast, unlocking zones all the way up to Deathknell, Faster leveling at -end game levels.

Welcome to EasyQuest!

Hey, that's sort of cool news. Might even give it a try after my WoW sub ends.

Didn't change on my server, although I think we do have the AA changes. I haven't checked. I'll welcome it when our server becomes a "normal" server, though, if only because I'd like to go to VT at some point in time.

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those are just test server notes i believe

Yeah, I noticed that after I posted. Either way, it stands for when it happens - the zone changes are not being made on the progression server.

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Wow. When I still played, most of those zones were closed to anyone who wasn't five levels above their minimum entry requirement now -- and in the case of ST and the Elemental Planes, you needed fairly hefty gear beyond that. Then again, Complete Heal still healed completely, because almost no one had over 10k HP. So this was a while back.

So yeah...the patch broke Progression Server's access to some zones. Basically it now requires keys to get into stuff, even if it had a minimum level requirement OR key access (like BoT). Yay SoE.

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