In retrospect, this probably is not a specifically Windows problem, and likely this is the wrong category. Ah, well.
In any case, I see basically three kinds of issues here:
1) zone_points being set to old maps even when new ones (like the combined common lands) are available. There's a "client" bitmask there that would solve this problem (I think), but they appear to be universally set to either all-bits-set or all-bits clear, instead of the correct masks for "clients before" and "clients after." These are more of an annoyance than a real problem, but it seems like the "fix" would be relatively easy to make globally (and people could still decide if they wanted old or new by setting the "current" expansion, no?). Some of the "Status 80" ones fall in here, too - blight fire moors just tosses you back to the Crescent Reach safe point if you try to zone/teleport there with a non-GM char.
2) zone_points and doors that are just missing or wrong, like the PoK ones for Erudin/Paineel. Those aren't a big deal, either, and I suspect that they're just symptoms of:
3) zone_points/doors that send you to maps that THE CLIENT DOES NOT HAVE. This
does seem like a big deal, and it's the one that's annoying me most. The client crashes and cannot log in again (because they're in a non-existent map zone) until I go and move them and/or fix the zone manually. "tox" and "misty" are the two that I've found so far. One char was a halfling who basically couldn't leave home after Gloomingdeep because misty thicket would crash him, and that's where the PoK book is for Riverdale.
Those category 3 ones have apparently been around for ever, but it seems like as time goes on and the Titanium/SoF clients become harder and harder to purchase, they're going to affect more and more people. Getting the client bitmasks right for these seems like it would be a relatively easy fix, if there were a definitive list of them somewhere. (And assuming the code honors the client bitmask).
Not having all the content up to date, or NPCs missing or whatever seems like a reasonable consequence of emulation vs. live. But these issues that cause a BASELINE INSTALL to crash in ways that require a fair amount of domain/database knowledge to fix seem like maybe they should get some attention at some point. Failing that, I'm just trying to be able to fix them proactively, rather than wait for my players to crash (always at inconvenient times for me
) and fix on a case-by-case basis.