Velks Lab v1.0 -vs- 2.0 revamp
 

When I first purchased Velious back in the day, I distinctly remember finding Velks Lab, zoning in and finding that the zone was empty. My mage was maybe mid-40s, the spiders conned green, hit waaay too hard, proc'd deadly velium poison or something similar.

I believe the zone was revamped not too long after launch because it was a ghost town.

After the revamp is when it became over-populated.

This is purely from memory. Does anyone have evidence to support this? Did I dream this? I've been trying to find information...

No, Velks definitely got revamped shortly after launch. But like the original Splitpaw, it's just very difficult to find pre-revamp information.