Hot Zones?

Do Hot Zones start with TSS?

http://everquest.allakhazam.com/wiki/EQ:Progression_Servers

Hot Zones - Level 65 and lower The Serpent's Spine Reference to New Hot zone system - Complete List of Hotzones

Ok, so it says that it rotates between 3 zones for your level, and to talk to Franklin Teek to find out which one is active.

1 of the 3 zones listed for level 65 is the Barren Coast which is a TBS zone. So it won't be active when TSS launches. Does that mean that if it's the "active" level 65 hotzone that we're screwed and we don't get a 65 hotzone until it switches to one of the other 2?

Also there is some conflicting info on that zam page. There are 3 different frequencies of hotzone changing listed:
1. rotate every 3 months first of January, April, July, and October.
2. rotate since April 20, 2016 with every patch regardless the time between the patches.
3. They randomize every day per server.

So which one is it?

None of the above. It re-rolls which of the 3 hotzone sets is in play each time a server is rebooted, patch or no patch. Note that you can get the same hotzone set two reboots in a row.

I read that differently, when they say Hot Zones up to 65 will unlock I think they mean the original 4 sets of Hot Zones, not the current Hot Zones up to level 65 will unlock.... so you will be able to go to Halls of Honor and get that AC15 Aug for example.

The augs drop regardless if the zone is currently a hot zone.

They will use the current Franklin Teek hot zones so ya some of those zones won't be accessible until they open up those expansions. Maybe the devs will change it for progression servers.

Will Franklin Teek even be up on Phinny to tell us what hot zones are active?

Franklin Teek is up, but not currently telling you the hot zones.

Edit: Franklin Teek is now handing out hot zone quests.

There was an icon in that notification or whatever screen that said to see him about hot zones, so it must be a thing.

Also the unlock announcement on the main site said it may take up to an hour for all features to become unlocked.

Some of them were dropping before TSS opened even. Had http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=49963 drop off Talendor in Skyfire a couple weeks ago.

I guess I was expecting this massive difference with TSS exp + Hotzones, exp seems better but not what I had imagined.

Currently the highest level Hot Zone we can do is lvl 60 Veksar. The 65 Hot Zone is in TBS.