Spirits of the Lost, and the Echoes of Time
stargrace 
Ah, sweet memories. Yesterday once my paladin reached level 60, I turned off experience so that I couldn’t level past that mark. I had volunteered to help Siege out in obtaining some extra achievements. I mentioned before that when EoF came out, the old achievements had been reset, so those who had not been to the old content and obtained aa from them back then, can now. Well, that consisted of pretty much every old T5 raid that rewarded aa, as well as a good portion of the ‘less then popular’ T6 raids (not counting the one that replicates shimmering citadel because most guilds farmed that one for status but wouldn’t farm the Djin Master’s Prism for example). If you’ve never been to Spirits of the Lost before, it’s a fun zone. It was REALLY hard back when level 50 was the cap, too. The zone was released along with the server wide quest to unlock the froglok race. I never beat it when 50 was the cap, in fact yesterday was the first time any one of my characters had completed it (and I didn’t even have the quest for the title so that sort of sucked). Even though it’s been years, the quests related to this server event are still there. The chain of quests gives fairly good aa (because you have to gain the trust of the frogloks) and also rewards a shiny house item. The final quest rewards a title, for saving the frogloks.
So why bother going back to this ancient zone? Well the grind to 200aa is a hard one. The closer you get to 200, the more experience you need. If you’ve been an avid quester and are not a new character, that means you’ve probably already done (and gotten aa) for the quests through the older expansions which leaves you with less options. There has been a huge increase of people mentoring and passing through older content for the achievements, which I’m happy to see.
There are a LOT of named in this zone, which is why Siege decided to do it yesterday afternoon.
My paladin got 6 just from that zone alone. The final boss to the zone of course is Venekor (who you also defeat again in KoS) and then finally Varanak the Everlasting. Since my group was mentored to level 60, and the three groups consisted of end game raiders for the most part, it took very little time to work our way through the raid zone, and it was a lot of fun. The loot was amusing, a lot of the named encounters would drop a whole slew of adepts and crafting rares, but nothing more. I remember when those crafting rares used to be *rare* and people would fight over who would get to have a few in their pocked when they left the raid. The same happened in DoF raids that would reward crafter bits, everyone would bid their dkp on them because it was just so difficult to farm any. Ah, I miss days like that, a lot.
Once we were finished in the zone, we headed to the Feerrott and took down the x4 encounter just outside of Cazic Thul. Three pieces of chain fabled gear dropped which was a nice surprise. The guild also gained a good amount of status, contested epics always reward a lot. We also went to Solusek’s Eye, where there was another epic up. Another three pieces of fabled gear, this time plate.
After that, it was off to the Commonlands, to defeat Echoes of Time. This zone used to be so difficult for my guild, I remember wiping over and over again, when 50 was the max level. The named used to eat through people’s weapons (armor? pants?) and before long we’d have a naked tank. King Zalak the Ancient gave us no problems today though, and he was dead in 18 seconds. Wow, fast zone.
When I mentioned I wanted to get back into raiding this wasn’t quite what I had in mind, but I had a lot of fun none the less. A thanks to Siege for letting me tag along, I hope they all gained a lot of achievements.