Key bottlenecks a possible improvement?

A wondering I will put forth for discussion:

We have a lot of posts every progression about various key pieces at certain eras. The more popular a server is the more of a problem some of these things are. For servers marketed as "kill dragons with your friends when you want" this is a problem as it kills momentum --it is contrary to the "sell" to have piles of people sitting on a groundspawn for example.

So my thought is simply: when an expac opens up put keying opportunities into the earlier raids. So for Kunark Vox, Naggy, Phinny, Cazic, Inny, and Eye of Veeshan drop X6 of a "sixth of a key". You combine the 6 pieces and there's your Charassis key. So once a week your guild keys up a group this way (if you don't go for open world too). Doesn't stop doing the old keying either.

Then put a similar key quest on all the AoC raid targets in Kunark, as well Drusella to get into VP.

Rationale: your guild rolls through all the raid content to get widespread access to the newer raid content. Your guild can do this on a planned schedule. Your guild won't be first or fastest this way, but you don't have to deal with the open-world race if you don't want to.

This approach also adds value to back-raiding (even though keyed zones open up on progression, as long as future keys open up the chain has validity even when Charassis and VP are open to all, because you would continue the process so Velious keys of various tiers could be worked onto classic-Kunark targets, Luclin keys Kunark-Velious and so on. Solves the planes of storms situation too...

Another unrealistic pipe dream, unless you will code this for free.

offline trading was a pipe dream once too.

Or a simpler version (1 type of item added to existing raid NPC, 1 vendor created with existing keys):

stackable "mysterious key" drops from raid encounters. Rather than a quest item these are a currency.

Key vendor (say in Freeport or Commonlands) has the nodrop keys. Howling Stones key could cost 10 mysterious keys, VP might cost 30.

The point of it being that raiding lets you open the raids to keep raiding.

But most of the old keyed raidzones lift the key requirements after a while, don´t they

Yes. Source I looked up suggests Kunark keyed zones open up somewhere around PoP or just after it. The effortless unlock span is usually just wide enough that what gets unlocked will be little used. For Agnarr specifically of course some things will never unlock.

We only get the threads about keyblocking in-era on progression servers. A mechanism that lets raiding get you in-era access by week 3-4* of the era if you raid heavily or by the end of the era if you raid more casually makes sense to me, since this is a drama point for some what appears to be a large number of people.

You want access fast/first you do the existing key quests.

*if you go the key currency route, you just don't put the keys onto the vendor until a few weeks into the expac.

Luclin - Classic areas unlocked.
Planes of Power - Veeshan's Peak, Old Sebilis, Howling Stones unlocked.

That's all that will be unlocked on Agnarr.

I think the easier route to VP keying for development purposes would be making the key piece items lore, no trade, no destroy to prevent farmers camping them. Also adding multiple other spawn points in the zone for these pieces at random intervals. This will at least help get people the pieces a littler faster and take very little development to do so.

The vendor idea could solve the "illusion bug through door fix" issue too, which would help justify some dev time spent on it:

Unlock them after giving lockpickers some time with their class/skill monopoly, but then some new keys are on the vendor. Example: Sebilis crypt key wouldn't be on the vendor during Kunark.

New key goes on the old ring system, no more issue with the illusion fix.
key currency could be available on loyalty vendor so you wouldn't need to do old raids on live.

This currency could be a sub-only feature to get as drops in the old raids...

Got it, thanks Snailish !