Yes, english is my second language. But I can write a lot better than that I guess, I just rambled on because I was on the phone during most of it and what I wanted to say changed somewhat. I hope this reply is more understandable.

I'm not saying open the doors completely, I'm still ok with area explore and quests being somewhat secret. But as I tried to say, area explores that are extremely hard and based on puzzles that are usually so hard that progress is often only made through cheating.

First group through hell consisted of only imms and people followed when info leaked out. First char with eq from Archmages in Silent was Iunna I believe and second was Cabdru? Other people have just butted their heads against the archmages and failed to my knowledge. A lot of people are solving it by basing their knowledge on textfiles that are being sent through AIM.

About the wands:
Yes, they might be empty because they are common knowledge among those that pass around info but that does not really matter, does it? Those that pass around the wands will still know a lot of spots and have monopoly on the wands. I can only lose on NOT trying to find a nice list.

To sum up. You are trying to make cf a job that you need to spend an amazing time on to compete with the best. Because the best have in 90% of the cases learned atleast parts of their knowledge through OOC means.