Version v9b arrives on March 10, 2004 with a lot of heavy changes. The changelog can be viewed here — while it's not long, it's very important. A screenshot from this 9b version seems to be available here.
On the fix side there were a few minor changes, mostly around the "ghost" bug, probably caused by characters that were invisible.
The new friends list interface is nothing more than the Friends section of the old multi-console, slightly reworked.
On the server side, the server was fully rewritten in Java to get better performance, with a bit more hindsight on server development (server development is a fairly complicated field, and the tools of the time weren't the same as today's).
On the client side, there were a lot of changes, and this version is a turning point: on the screenshot mentioned above and in the changelog, you can see the addition of the friends interface, as well as the geolocation icon, whose purpose at the time I have no idea about (the map seems to have appeared in v11b with the creation of the quest book icon, which allowed opening a book containing the map). The spell bar is reduced from 12 to 10 slots to make room for the new icons, and this version marks the move of the sound management and game-closing controls from the bottom-right corner to the top-right corner. Based on Dofus Times 2 (video by Liche on the topic), you can notice that the corners of the speech bubbles are no longer rounded but square, moving the game even further away from v1b.
On the game content side, new areas were added (I don't know which area was added, I think it's the class temples) and some maps were modified to be modernized.
2 days after the v9b update, version v9.1b was released — it contains graphical updates as well as a fix for an issue that was crashing the game. Changelog for v9.1b.
On the website it was already possible to browse the bestiary as well as some information about the game — be careful, as these pages show what was planned for the game; a large portion of the monsters were never released and/or don't have the same name. Bestiary page 1, Bestiary page 2, Bestiary page 3, Bestiary page 4, Bestiary page 5, The world of Dofus v1b to v9b (some locations were removed later), What was planned for the Dofus eggs.
Other map changes are available in Dofus Times 2 on page 8 (visible in a video by Liche) — there are 4 screenshots. The 2 rightmost images are the same map, it's map [5,0], and the Dofus Retro map is almost identical. However, the second image from the left shows map [6,-1] — in v10b you can see a second version of the map: in the earliest versions there's a farm on the map, in v10b the farm was moved, and this map will later host the brigand transporter. Finally, the bottom-left image was a pen in the earliest versions; you can see the pen was removed and a house was added. Later, in the last versions of the beta, this map will be modified again — the house is replaced by a blacksmith's workshop. Still in Dofus Times 2, on page 7 visible here, you can notice the stele has changed and no longer has the question mark, which matches the removal of the console in v8b.
I think the maps added with this update are the class temples and their surroundings, which would make a large area for the future addition of monsters.
