How large could a private server get,and what's the largest?
 

I am unclear about a few things..

Well first off let me say that when I found out about EQemu I was really excited, because I always wanted to play EverQuest but did not want to pay monthly fees.

But when I started trying to play on private servers, to my disappointment there are never more than thirty people online at once, and the gameplay is unbalanced- alligator skins sell for 80 platinum, and easy enemies give ridiculous drops that have no level requirements (scorpius2k comes to mind).

First of all, is it impossible for a private server to accommodate hundreds of people, because a personal computer doesn't have enough power?

Second of all, is the issue about power or is it just that not very many people know about EQemu, or want to play on it?

I guess I was expecting a private server experience that could compare to Sony's EQ experience (like the private servers for Ragnarok Online, which are easily as good as the pay ones imo).

Thanks to all who inform me :-)

Many private servers run from personnal computers, making it difficult when its needed to host more than 25 players playing at the same time, but there are a few servers running on profesionnal hardware, its the case of servers like Winter Roar, Scorpius2k, able to handle hundreds of players.

I would say all of threes, few servers run on profesionnal hardware, fewer of them have a dedicaced team, and least important, there are not "Super" Servers on EQEmu, that would act like a players magnet, and would increase the EQEmu PR toward the MMORPG community.

One important aspect of EQEmu that many does not see, or simply forgot, is EQEmu Team is developping and supporting the EverQuest Emulator (EQEmu), but not the servers related to it, there are on EQEmu some servers made by developers, but all the informations related to them are closed, making it difficult to non-developers to build quality servers. EQEmu is an EverQuest Emulator, not a network/community of Emulated EverQuest servers.

Because of the fact that all this was coded by individuals (the server code, that is), the game experience/quality is likely to be a lot lower than Sony's. Not anyone's fault really.

However, I do believe some of the private servers can hold a couple hundred people. Winter's Roar boasts that, anyways. And not all servers are going to be well run, or meaningfully run. IE, just up for a few people's enjoyment. Not catering to an audience.

I think one of the main reasons that the servers that are on proffesional hardware get very little/moderate traffic is because that roughly half the people playing EQEmu are after non-legit, and some of the others want semi legit, some others want legit, etc. It's mostly to do with hardware and lack of development though.

I see... So the fundamental difference I think between EQ private servers and Ragnarok Online private servers is that the EQ ones must have content written from the ground up, since I guess all the quests and maybe even spawn points, layout, etc are Sony property?

Just as an aside question, what do some of you think is the best free mmorpg experience right now- EQemu, RO, Lineage 2, etc..?

The content isn't copyright as far as I know...there are also a few projects working to release databases based on EQLive spawns to give servers that don't want the truly custom server.

I can't comment on the other emulators or whatever they are, but I can say that EQEMu has come a very long way in the time I've been a part of this community.