I have still been searching for solutions, and I came across a post which inspired me to change the port for my LoginServerInformation in my eqemu_config file. I changed it from 3306 to 5998, and left the DB port set as 3306.
Now when I click on my Start.bat command, I get this:
I read a post that said that same error message often means you have corrupted DB files, but I don't see how any of my files could be corrupted...I downloaded them properly, as far as I know. And if I made a MISTAKE by changing the port number in my eqemu_config file to 3306 (instead of 599

then you should know that when it's set to 5998, world.exe eventually crashes after about 15 seconds.
I hope I'm providing enough info for any takers