Why Block of ore?
 

Anyone know what prompted this change?

I fondly remember on live these being a god send to pay for low level spells.

Can't seem to find any info on them.

Hopefully so that higher levels will stop disrupting Sol A to farm the blocks for plat.

Permafrost has been riddled with toons who clear the whole top end spawn to spawn for the blocks. They must have been making a fortune. Its probably to slow that down as well. IDK.

If it's not classic, it shouldn't have been changed.

Blocks were fairly common and I too am guilty of having alts in high goblin pop areas whenever I was bored.
Monk in runnyeye (sneak sell and bank woo)
Necro in sola (vendor nearby woo)
jboots Erudite mage in perma

I mean the Bricks and Fine Steel weapons will still make a bored romp through the dungeons kinda worth it but not the greatness it once was

That's easily proven false; it wasn't even on the test server until 2002 (which is by definition post-classic):

http://lucy.allakhazam.com/itemhistory.html?id=10480

Now you could argue that it's hypothetically possible that the item existed in classic, and just no one bothered to tell Allakhazam that until 2002 ... but even if you could make that argument (and it'd be a stretch given how organized and established 'Zam was by then), it seems all but certain that the devs looked at other sources of evidence as well before making this change.

Dang. So many years of players making pp and now real newbies like me will find it harder to gear up through EC.

I don't think the Lucy history tab existed prior to 2002, or they wiped it and re-started it in 2002. I've looked at hundreds of those tabs and never saw one for 2000-2001. For example, Jade Prod which was well known to exist in early Kunark and was nerfed when Chardok was patched, today for us, doesn't have it's initial entry until 2003.

http://lucy.allakhazam.com/itemhistory.html?id=7254

That said, if they removed the ore it was probably not classic or they would have said so.

Oh I wasn't aware of that; that certainly does shoot a hole in what I said.

But my larger point remains: the devs don't change things with just one piece (or in this case, one bad example) of evidence.

This is nothing compared to invis pulling everything in Kunark to the zone in for 2 years