Not to toot my own horn, but....well ok, I'm tooting my own horn.
http://www.eqemulator.net/forums/showthread.php?t=29707
Took a few days to get that far, (and I only just started looking at this project!) and the only thing I'm using there is a disassemble of eqgame.exe, a debugger, and the encoder functions in EQemu. Not a single live packet, packet dump, no existing structure, whatever (though I *really* wish I had them right now).
It's a *different* skill set for sure, but I don't think it's entirely all that harder. I think what creates the perception that its harder is that the skill set is much more rare than the dime-a-dozen programmer.
Personally, I don't have any grandiose visions of running a server. I just want to learn and contribute. Can't do either with closed source. *shrug*