Wow.. I guess I didn't expect this kind of response, all I wanted to know was the best way of populating the zones based on packets collection. And it sounds like I can't just login to live and collect the NPC names, spawn locs and pathing info, because none of the packet collectors currently work with live. And i haven't been able to figure what to do with the packet files currently at
www.projecteq.net/logs/ (which seems like they're what i'm looking for), eqbuilder/eqExtractor doesn't seem to work.. :(
So i'm unsure on the steps I should take next. I would like to get the zones populated as close to EQLive as possible, but i'm not sure I have the time to manually add the mobs to the zones. I don't know how long it would take compared with using the packet logs.
As for the problem with low population and stuff, I'm not really sure I care about that stuff right now. For me EQLive is the reference, which everything else should be based off of, so you want that as good as you can get it. Fine-Tuning it for your population size should be done by a server-by-server basis. So when i get PoD up and running, and submitted it to Angelox's DB or PEQ or whatever, people can do whatever they want with it. But there should always be that reference for every one to access. I think that's what the PEQ guys were aiming for, but it (appears) to be bogged down. That's why I think Angelox's DB is a good idea, like PEQ but with out the data restrictions.
However, getting back on topic, whats the best way of getting the zones populated?