Ok between going back through wayback machine and going back to 2001 quillmane entry in alla's and the posts here:
http://www.showeq.net/forums/archive...php/t-371.html you can see that people were starting to put the secret of quill together(validating the guide i linked as classic spawning system). and yes zander i might have started farming quill in GoD but that guide was in a text form on a site before it was made all pretty there i just cant find it yet.
Edit: adding some quotes from alla's entry. They are definate but show that some people started to put pieces together:
After 130 hours... By: Anonymous
Posted @ Mon, Jun 18th 4:40 AM 2001 Score: Default[2.00]
After 130 hours (no, not straight through, over the course of 2 months) of camping Quillmane... i have noticed that she does seem to spawn mostly between Paw and Aviaks, once she spawned almost due west of Paw, but the rest of the times i've killed her she was southwest of paw, near a hill at approx loc -5000, +1000, so far 5 Quill kills, 5 sets of feathered leggings... i honestly don't think that the cloak is THAT rare, i think i was just unlucky... but i just wanted to offer some assistance to others so they can get their Epics, or just a nice Levi item =) another thing that really helps is to have a ranger friend sitting next to you =)
and:
My luck might help...dunno By: Anonymous
Posted @ Fri, Mar 30th 1:29 AM Score: Default[2.00]
Ok I had heard about this awesome cloak and after seeing one of the rangers in our guild put his to good use I was determined to get one.
So there i was in SK, not knowing where it spawned and not knowing how often. I was just told by my ranger friend...random..
In fact a friend of mine hunted for 14 hrs non stop with a tracker with no avail.
So this is what I did.. I tracked and killed all of the named gnolls in the zone and everying unique that came up. 20 minutes later..Quill spawned..between the spires and the KFC.
I killed it ..with ease (level 53 druid) and got my cloak.....YAY!!!