You know, several existing servers offer the experience you are looking for and with the dramatically lower population and increased GM oversight Griefers and PvPers do not last long in our worlds. It's pretty easy to play in a world built for 2,000 that only has 30-100 people in it and never run into the other people. When you do, you can be sure they don't want to do something that will get them /banned, and there's a greater sense of community so they are usually quite nice.
One note is that I'd make sure to pick an established server that will be around a while.
If you want an original EQ experience, join PEQ or Legacy of the Rathe. If you want to try something with GM Powers where you can be 70 in a day, try Krushers. If you want to loot your epic 60 seconds after you log in, try KMRA. If you want accelerated XP and Loot, try Jest3.
Those are the only ones I've played on that have always been around. I'm sure there are other stable servers out there as well, but before I started playing on those 5 I tried playing on 3-4 others that went *poof*, so I'd rather play on one of the ones I listed here
Good luck whatever you decide to do