>>For others such as yourself and multitudes of other players, you want to be at the final destination with as little work as possible to ensure that at the final destination you can truly gauge your skill as a player (ie, at an equal point, you can determine if you are better than say, Deriveh).

I don't think you quite get it. I assume I have probably near the most area knowledge and time spent exploring out of any non-IMM. I know all the area explores extremely well. I spend hours combing every area, I try to know every room name, every little hidden door or locked room, that random potion that gives +1 hitroll, everything in any area that I might have a PK in. Why? It's just fun - I like exploring and I think a lot of the areas are really great. (notable exception: Prison of Glymarch)

There are some things you just don't find. Maybe it's a slight on me as an explorer that after all this time, I didn't even know room x existed, which is a locked room in an area that I'm not sure I ever had a PK in, with the key being held by the mob in the door - the only clue that mob is a mage is that he's sometimes invis. Does it mean I want to be there with the least work because I got the answer off AIM? It's not something I would have ever gotten.

Let's take a step back - go back to when wands just changed over, where I knew every wand, 50% by having that wand, 25% by knowing a char IC that had that wand, and 25% by having a friend OOC who had that wand. Now, new wands popped up everywhere. Does it mean that I want the path of least work to not spend the tedious time killing every mage mob with a new character that doesn't want to rank up to detect artifact? If there is a quest that has 10,000 runes on the ground, and you have to pick up the correct one and put it in a box on the other side of the area, and you can carry only one at a time, if you did the first thousand and you complained on AIM, and someone told you it was rune 6345, is that a slight on you because you didn't grind it out?

That said, I did do a lot of the work after the wand system switched over, and I found 90% of them after 100+ hours of looking, and I didn't mind it too much honestly. I can safely say some I would have never found on my own. I just wanted to post this because I think it's unfair to casual gamers and that the admins who put it in defend it a little too zealously because of all the time they spent on it. Personally I like the whole system - but I think it works great even if all the wands are listed in the Lyceum, or with clues, or whatever. Out of my last four mage characters, two didn't use sleek black rods. I'd say that the current system accomplishes a lot even with all the knowledge.