I am thinking that's what I'll have to do; manually cut out the parts of the world I don't want.
It's true that the current emulator projects were not in operation at that time, but there have been private servers since before the game even went pay-to-play.
Often, they were running the original Aegis server software, but reverse-engineered emulation was happening by 2003, if I'm not mistaken.
Anyway, the reason I want the old version is because I have absolutely zero interest in every new skill, adjustment, map, mob, or hat which was released after I stopped playing.
The problem with editing the hell out of a contemporary version is not simply removing NPCs and maps to make the world functionally smaller, but re-scripting a ton of other things which have changed, and replacing current maps with old ones, etc.
I guess I just need to get into the repository and see how far back this trunk goes....