Give em both barrels Cavedude. I have followed, played, and setup servers for EQEmu for over 4 years now and I can attest the mound of poo that the code used to be. I have had no issues in all that time with anyone in the forums or the project and most are willing to take the time to re-explain something even if it's in 10000000000 other threads. As you pointed out, if you want something done, take the time and learn how to fix it yourself. All of the master programmers and devs in the community will bend over backwards to help you out with answering questions and tweaking code, they just don't have time to do every little want or desire that comes up. I know first hand how long it can take to write a functional code/program and there can simply never bee too many programmers for something as large scale as an MMO.
To all the doomsayers out there, just remember this emulator will be alive and well long after EQLive gets the plug pulled.
