Dethdlr 
I remember several years ago preparing to raid Deathtoll.
The first thing I did was ride a cloud up on Bonemire and jump off at just the right spot so I could land on the floating island containing Arbiter Selek. But before I could talk to him, I had to speak Draconic. That’s right, first I had to do the quest Speak as a Dragon that started with a raid and then sent me all over Norrath looking for items.
Once I talked to Arbiter Selek, he sent me to The Vaults of El’Arad. A few hours later he sent me to kill Sothis in Halls of Fate and then talk to the ghost dragon in The Blackscale Sepulcher. After that, he sent me to talk to Nagafen. Nagafen then sent me to kill four epic dragons: Harla Dar, Lord Vyemm, Gorenaire, and Talendor. Once I did that, I talked to Nagafen again and he gave me access to Deathtoll. Kind of.
I zoned into Deathtoll but found that there was a barrier I couldn’t get past. I went back and talked to Nagafen who sent me to the armorer in Solusek’s Eye who gave me the Marked Flameshield of Scale. If you equip this item, you’re able to turn off the barrier and make it into the rest of Deathtoll.
That was a serious accomplishment that took quite a while to pull off. Many people died multiple times just trying to get to Arbiter Selek the multiple times you have to talk to him. And what did I get for all this work? I got access for my raidforce to go see one of the most awesome looking dragons in EQ2: Tarinax! He is an incredible looking skeletal dragon protecting an enormous mound of treasure. He’s huge!
When I walked into his room for the first time and saw him sitting there, there was this feeling of awe and amazement. The day we took him down was one I will remember for a long, long time. All that work had finally paid off. It was quite fitting that his chest had more loot in it than I had seen in any other exquisite chest.
Fast forward a bit. GU 57 came out and with it, the cloud transportation has been removed. The “cloud” stations just port you to the next island. Much faster to get around, but it takes a good bit of flavor away from the zones. You no longer get much of a sense of what fits in where. As such, they moved Arbiter Selek to the lower southwest edge of the Halls of Fate island since it’s impossible to get to where he used to be (at least until we get flying mounts with Velious).
And guess what’s coming with GU 58? No more access quest line required for Deathtoll. That’s right. After GU 58, all you have to do is walk up to the entrance and zone in. What was once a major accomplishment requiring a good bit of work has now been reduced to a click.
I guess in some aspects I can understand removing it. It is a pretty cool zone and I’m sure more people would run it if it didn’t take so much work to get into. I’ve gone along on a Deathtoll raid in the past simply because the raidforce going in didn’t have access and I did. They wanted the AA and the trophy that you now get from killing Tarinax. It’s sad to see the accomplishment of gaining access to Deathtoll reduced to a click but in the grand scheme of things, I guess with the level cap now being 90, it’s not really much of an accomplishment anymore.
So with GU 58, Deathtoll will be open to anyone who wishes to stroll on in. And I’ll be reduced to talking about how back in my day, we I had to walk to school, in the snow, with no shoes, uphill, BOTH WAYS! Tell that to the kids of today, and they won’t believe you.
LOL, I can still tell you one raids zone from the old days that is probably just as hard today as it was when it came out. The Djinn Master. For those that have done it, they will cringe. For those that have not, give it a try. Don’t even need to mentor, it will still be just as hard to do. 🙂 Although they are removing the access to DT, I don’t see this will hurt anything. In fact all it will prob do is let people mentor to 80 or 85 and do the zone easer. I agree though, it was one of the coolest zones in its day.
Ahh, The Djinn Master. I remember reading up on that one. If I remember right, I was trying to decide between trying that raid and smashing myself in the head repeatedly with a large hammer. It only took a week or so for the swelling to go down and the headaches to stop. I still stand by my decision. 🙂
Ah Dethdir, I feel for ya man. I too see the WoW-ishness seeping into our game; the removal of accomplishment; the reduction in achievement. I cannot tell you how many times I missed the jump from the cloud to talk to the Arbiter and am horrified at the removal of the “Monk-eye” style of flying on clouds.
Thanks for the write-up
Im all for removing most access restrictions. Not that it would affect me anymore, but the ones i would have enjoyed seeing vanish would be the old RoK ones. Not 100% sure here, but VS / Overking > Levi > VP > Trak. There went a week every time we recruited a newbie…
Great write up! I find the removal of access quests kind of benefits most folks but also is a sad thing bringing back nostalgic memories. I have already done the endless jumps to chat to Selek and am happy I won’t have to do them ever again, BUT I’m happy I did do the questline, especially when it was in it’s infancy. Tough quest back then but now the toon that is my main is not the toon I did the quest on and I like to think that SoE won’t remove the questline altogether even though you don’t need it to gain access. Would be nice to go back and experience that again (minus the jumping off clouds. Do we know if the questlines will be removed? or just the access requirement?
They have removed many access quest requirements before, but as far as I know they never removed the access quests themselves.
So yes, you’ll still be able to that questline them if you want to.
As for the access “quests” in RoK: They removed the need to do Levi a while ago already. Not sure about VS/OK to get to Levi. Trak access should stay for a while longer I think, that’s still a hard mob for a pickup raid to do.
Just the access is removed and i think also the barrier.
Questlines remain as always.
I’ve only been playing a little over a year, and many access quest requirements had already been removed when I started, or were removed shortly thereafter. I’ll be honest; it’s somewhat disappointing to see. I got hooked on this game because of the challenge and effort involved, and the sense of accomplishment when I (finally) completed a difficult task.
That said, I do understand the stance of those that have been playing for years, and are tired of doing the same quests over and over again. I believe they did something for Speak as a Dragon, where only one toon has to do the annoying/lengthy collect-all-the-pieces step. Rather than remove access quests, perhaps they should consider finding a way to do a once-per-account access system. If you’ve already done it once, then you’re allowed in. If you want to do the quest again, you can, but it’s optional. That still gives people like me a chance to overcome a challenge and the sense of accomplishment that comes with it, yet it also allows those that have done the access quest once the ability to run all their characters through there without having to repeat the same lengthy process.