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
