The table: commands allows you to customize whatever status levels you want for a command (the server has default values if this table is empty). You can run around as a player, non-GM, and set the #zone command and any other you like to status 0 (I think #zone is defaulted to 0 anyway?)
Here's a partial list from the wiki, and it's a little out of date (addon.ini is not used anymore, I don't think):
http://www.eqemulator.net/wiki/wikka...kka=GMCommands
But no, you do not need to be a GM to use any command if you set the status in the commands table.