A few general questions

[Gobanfennin]

I played the original EQ when it launched for about 5 years, and had 3 65 characters before I quit - an ogre shaman, a high elf wizard, and half elf bard. Lately i've had the urge to play again, but I'm afraid I dont have the time needed to advance on the live servers so i found this site.

I was wondering if a majority of the users use teamspeak or a voice program similiar to the ones used in WoW, or if that is primarily a guild thing?

I was also wondering what the most players on a server are and what server that is? I primarily want to play with the oldschool UI/graphics, and progress naturally, with perhaps minor exp/drop rates increased, and based off this the Legacy of the Rathe server sounds like the best match or the progression server. Which of these two servers generally has more active people? Thanks

[xxarthurxx]

I think most of the eqemu community as a hole doesnt like large time sinks so most servers you go on will have exp and drop rates that are far better than live. As for teamspeak/ventrilo i know that alot of the raid guilds on my home server were requiring it (stormhaven) but personlly i think its better to not use them as its annoying listening to everyone babble on and on usually distracting you from the actual raid ect :P

As for server populations id say raid addicts and stormhaven usually have pops breaking 100 but they arnt really of the progression you are looking for they are fully custom. So far most of the classic progression servers i see come up just die a month or two later. Best thing is just to log on a few of the high pops and ask around people on the emu are very helpful :D

[trevius]

Here is a nice list to start when considering joining a server. I don't think that all of these are still available, but many are:

http://www.eqemulator.net/forums/showthread.php?t=24875

And I think Vent is mainly used on a per guild-basis. But, I do know that Zebuxoruk has one for the whole server to use if that is something that is high priority for you. Personally, vent was a huge part of what turned me off from WoW. I just couldn't get used to talking instead of chatting. I think it was too distracting as well.