Archive research: Thai beta, regional patches and the Renewal boundary
Checked 2026-10-28. Research only; no emulator changes.
The next archive round adds original Thai recovery/EXP documentation, Episode evidence for every stage, stronger Einbroch/Ninja availability bounds, and same-day Thai reports for EP12.1 and EP12.2. Those reports now date Morroc/Moscovia and Memorial Dungeons; the earlier open questions below should be read with that update.
Round-five update: original Einbroch schedule/manual notices and Thai passive-recovery guides have now been recovered. The timeline bible and current research gaps supersede earlier missing-document statements while preserving the qualifications below.
Original Thai CBT dates and character policy recovered
The original September 8, 2002 operator notice schedules Thai CBT from September 16 at 18:00 to October 15 at 24:00, on Chaos, Loki and Iris. It announces deletion of CBT play data and IDs after testing. OBT play data is intended to continue into commercial service.
The launch-day report, dated September 16, says Thai servers have operated for over five hours and that reported bugs are being coordinated with Gravity. This strengthens the opening date beyond the later blog mirrors. The report survives in a 2004 capture: that capture date is not the launch date.
The original launch notice does not give the October 25 OBT date. That date remains supported here by the previously recorded mirror, pending an original OBT announcement. Neither recovered document provides a numerical recovery, EXP or monster database.
For the requested continuous-character experience, an authentic historical wipe and an optional continuity migration must remain distinct. Researching the wipe does not authorize deleting characters.
A crucial regional distinction in July 2002
The original Asiasoft Thai-language July news index explicitly discusses the English Beta. Its Thai language and Thai operator footer do not make those patches Thai-server patches. This material predates Thai CBT.
The July 17 Beta 2 guide lists six second-job locations and an identification consumable costing 40 zeny. The July 23 note reports fixes made July 22, including the milk seller and milk price of 8 zeny, missing NPCs, character access and Training Ground routing. These are original operator records, but belong in the international prelude until a Thai application date is established.
Early recovery, EXP and item mechanics: stronger leads, unresolved deployment
A preserved BEEhive Beta 2 page attributes its notice to Asiasoft/Gravity and links the old operator site. It describes:
- Swordman passive HP recovery changing from flat amounts to MaxHP scaling.
- The recovery skill improving healing items by 10% per skill level.
- VIT improving healing-item amounts by 1% per point.
- Death costing 5% EXP and a reported 3% dungeon item-loss chance.
- Cast-time scaling changing from AGI to DEX, plus monster/pricing changes.
These are attributed early Beta 2 claims, not authenticated Thai CBT parameters. The page's “since July 2, 2002” footer is not the publication or deployment date of every notice. The EXP penalty's denominator and exact affected items are unspecified. Some translations may be inaccurate.
This changes the research approach: do not assume every early recovery skill was flat until Juno. HP skill recovery, SP skill recovery, natural recovery, healing-item scaling and weight gates need separate histories. It does not resolve the Thai natural HP/SP formula or establish a Thai 5% death penalty.
Round five recovered the original Thai Swordman and Mage guides: their passive tables state 5–50 HP and 3–30 SP respectively, every 10 seconds. These are passive skills, not natural recovery. The guides omit MaxHP/MaxSP terms and effective dates; their December 2003 captures do not authenticate Thai CBT rules or resolve the HP disagreement with BEEhive.
For monster stats and drops, this notice establishes that a rebalance was described, but supplies no complete old/new table. Existing RagnaDB and July 2003 Athena samples remain candidates. None can yet be promoted to a complete September 2002 Thai database.
Alpha is an explicit prelude
The September 22, 2001 Alpha guide is a contemporary English player observation. It reports five available first jobs, no implemented Magician or skills, different geography, healing loot and potion values unlike later RO. Its rare/common labels do not provide numerical probabilities. The guide's update date proves observation by that date, not the beginning of Alpha.
No separate Thai Alpha service has been established. The patch history now begins with global Alpha/Beta preludes and switches explicitly to Thai CBT. Uncertain international EXP tables and reset claims in community chronologies are not copied into Thai production rules.
Thai patches now have stronger date evidence
| Thai update | Test schedule | Main schedule | Evidence and qualification |
|---|---|---|---|
| Amatsu | 2004-04-19 | 2004-04-26 | Republished operator client notice; publication is May 6, later than its body schedule. |
| Umbala + Niflheim | 2004-09-20 | 2004-09-27 | Republished operator notice; bundled Thai release, replacement client required. |
| Ayothaya | 2005-04-04 | 2005-04-11 | Operator interview and announcement; development-start years conflict, release schedule is explicit. |
| High-Class | 2005-07-04 | 2005-07-18 | Republished operator announcement; includes several systems, not just jobs. |
| Einbroch / 10.1 | 2005-10-03 | 2005-10-17 | Original September 28 schedule now recovered; manual-patch notice repeats the main date. Completion remains unconfirmed. |
| Lighthalzen | 2006-02-07 | 2006-02-21 | Contemporary report of Asiasoft announcement; deployment completion still unconfirmed. |
| Gunslinger / 10.4.2 | Unresolved | 2007-02-27 | Contemporary announcement; says Ninja was already available. |
| Veins / 11.2 | Unresolved | 2007-09-18 | Contemporary announcement; numerical image tables not recovered. |
Schedules are not silently upgraded to proven successful deployments. The machine ledger records the distinction.
Episode bundles are insufficient
The High-Class announcement includes adoption, guild skills, Godly/level-4 weapon quests, wedding skills and a Super Novice job-cap increase from 70 to 99. A contemporary regional comparison says Thailand's initial High-Class version excludes newer skills just added in Korea. The Thai Lighthalzen announcement subsequently lists additional High-Class skills, Homunculus and reskill NPCs. A fully populated modern trans skill tree would therefore need review before use in the initial High-Class stage.
The September 2006 ROLC minutes mix current behavior, rejected requests and future plans. They discuss 10.3 Teleport behavior and Guild Dungeon restrictions as current. Their projected 2007 Ninja roadmap cannot override the later Gunslinger notice, which says Ninjas already exist before its February 2007 update. The earlier combined Hugel/Ninja/Gunslinger milestone has been split.
The Noghalt promotional interview names August 8, 2006, although its displayed publication date is September 7. The ledger retains this inconsistency and uses the council minutes as a separate already-live bound.
The Veins report warns that Thai boss HP might already have received a change discussed in the general update. Its boss VIT/skill descriptions therefore cannot safely become a blanket mutation of every modern monster record. The original numerical image tables now resolve to placeholders in the article representation inspected here.
Late pre-Renewal bounds recovered
A May 23, 2009 Thai Brynhild test describes Episode 13.1 as already present and a Thai guild already making its new Godly item. That supplies an availability bound, not a release day. It also prevents substituting iRO's June 9 rollout for Thailand.
The recovered March 15, 2009 operator index lists an Ep.13.1 ASH VACUUM announcement dated March 3, linking notice 10139. The notice body remains unrecovered; March 3 is an index-listed publication date, not a confirmed launch date.
A November 2, 2009 Thai 13.2 feature report describes the update as present, including New World extensions, pet bonuses and armor enchanting. A newly recovered September 30 report explicitly mentions Thai 13.2 as already released, tightening the availability bound to September 30, 2009. Neither supplies the exact launch day. The latter article's remaining content concerns Korean Renewal and does not apply to Thai pre-Renewal. The full late Thai weekly-maintenance sequence remains missing.
The original November 5, 2010 operator notice schedules Class 3 and Renewal for November 9, 2010, identifies the new client as EP13.2.1, and lists Renewal-era systems. A November 9 report describes the welcome reset event starting that day. This establishes a strong planned cutover with contemporary launch-day corroboration. It does not identify the exact maintenance-completion time of every Thai server.
Our target is consequently the state immediately before that maintenance. Episode 13.2 is the last identified major pre-Renewal content stage; the exact final balance snapshot and intervening 2009–2010 updates are still unqualified. EP13.2.1 is recorded as an excluded boundary rather than a playable target stage.
Reproducibility and remaining archive work
Archive discovery metadata records hashes and resolved URLs for the recovered pages. Raw pages remain in the system temporary cache, not republished as full articles. UTF-8 and Windows-874 pages were read without executing their scripts.
For later recoveries, the round-five date/notice packet records durable HTML paths under archives/html/dates-round5/, requested/resolved URLs, retrieval outcomes and hashes; the beta packet records the recovered passive guides. Earlier temporary-cache notes describe that earlier pass only.
Wayback redirected several requested timestamps to later captures. In particular, the novice/guide requests resolved to December 2003: their existence cannot prove September 2002 mechanics. Broad CDX searches sometimes returned 503 or timed out. Neither failure is evidence that the archive has no matching records.
Next evidence targets are original OBT and commercial-service notices; original Comodo/Juno balance tables; dated Thai recovery tests; successful completion of the recovered October 17 Einbroch schedule; exact 10.4.1, Rachel and Nameless rollout notices; and the final 2009–2010 maintenance stream. Every recovered numeric claim needs regional scope, effective date, raw units and rounding before emulator work begins.
Round six: recovered bodies and original guides
The date packet and beta packet add 25 notice bodies, four operator guides and one inspected schedule image. There are now 41 recovered bodies, five missing bodies and one image-only body in the 47-entry register. The current timeline and remaining gaps supersede earlier recovery counts in this log.
The new Novice Guild War chapter is dated September 26, 2005 by an explicit operator completion report, while its text still describes a main-server trial. Keep the September 30 guild amendment and October 25 announced war hours separate. A late-captured schedule image does not override the later timetable notice.
Official Rachel guides now provide a two-step reward sequence (four powders from Maheo, then 700,000 unspecified EXP on necklace return), Ktullanux HP 4,417,000 and a two-hour fire reset after the boss dies. Guide publication and activation dates are unknown. The recovered Ash Vacuum preview still says “coming soon”; its March 3 index date cannot become the launch day.
Original basic/interface/training guides add weight, death/revival and tutorial descriptions without an authenticated beta-effective date or natural HP/SP amount/interval formula. The two revival routes are not separated clearly enough to prescribe a universal Resurrection formula. Tutorial Fabre's Base-only progress is not the ordinary field monster's EXP table.
No emulator files were changed or run. The HTML catalog links saved response bytes and the separately recorded image.