On a character I have from the old days, lots of gear slots are marked purple. I assume that's because I'm not subbed and they have an aug that's Prestige. But these augs are all old and crappy, like the Pristine Diamond of Chilling Protection which only has a meager "SV COLD: +6" benefit. Why would that and similar augs be marked Prestige and only be usable by subbed accounts? Just about any yard trash drops F2P usable augs which are much better than these old augs which have the Prestige flag.
TLPs I would wager. Anyhow it would be nice if they could just remove the Prestige flag once an item is 3-4 expansions old on each particular server.
Because all augs were supposed to be prestige, from the worst to the best. And they generally are. Exceptions were made for special augs (hotzone augs, some anniversary augs I think, some quest augs). And at one point they changed the TBM type 5 augs to not be prestige to give FTP players something they could use in those slots, and the random drop ones.
Probably to have a consistent flag from when an item original releases and is relevant. I agree with yepmetoo that the Prestige flag should probably fall off after a number of expansions pass otherwise players end up in your situation.
Historical fact. Just get new augs (yeah, I know, easier said than done and will take some time). Bad augs don't make your gear useless. Only the aug is useless. So it's no worse than having an empty aug slot.
Some of the LDoN augs are powerfull but generally all old augs got marked with the prestige tag for selling more AllAccess packages. Today it partially could be seen as a relic of the past. Another point is that LDoN was only available to players who bought the expansion back in the days and that during this time peroid no FTP business model existed so LDoN and Norrath itself was only accessible to players who had bough a membership package.
anything beyond 3 expansions back, ie legacy shouldn't be prestige, but they're not too swift at reflagging them with each new expansion release, Not too long ago they did a sweep and fixed a bunch of them, like Heart of the Sky, old HZ aug in Acrylia Caverns.
Prestige should stay as the point of prestige is to encourage subbing. Nothing wrong with encouraging it to play older content as well as newer content. *shrugs*
For subscribers there is a better solution than prestige gear: https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/suggestions.271032/page-12#post-4219156
