First poster here, also working on re-creating a EQ client using OpenGL. Seems to be a popular pastime here
PixelEngineer, are you using backface culling? I have tried to turn it on but this removes a lot of faces that should be visible:
When backface culling is disabled:
Looks like the normals and winding order of many faces are wrong in the s3d files. Or maybe there's some flag to invert them that I overlooked? In Blender, the normals of the Pedestal are pointing down instead of up:
I could just leave it disabled but this sometimes causes z-fighting (look at the water in the second image).