Is eqemu a waste of time for new people?

[javaman]

I have always been against the idea of paying a recurring fee for a game.

I want to setup a standalone server where just me, my wife and my kids could play.

I don't want to enter into a world where it is so uber-competitive that I don't stand a chance.

I want an environment free of hacks, cheating, bots, cursing, potty-mouth teens.

I have played Neverwinter nights in this way with my family and have enjoyed it.

I briefly read on the ragezone board that eqemu or hackerquest are two emulators that would allow me to play standalone lan.

I being totally new to everquest and MMORPG, decided to give everquest a try yesterday, so I bought the Titanium pack from a Gamestop. I have no intention of signing an account (even the 30 day that comes free).

Now I am slowly discovering that I am SOL. I have tried seeing if I could put in old files to make this work, but that practice is referred to as backpatching and noone here is capable of doing that.

So then I tried downloading the free one from Sony's website, Trilogy and that isn't supported by emulator either. And the only option for that one is to patch to the latest live update from Sony which according to the website, only patched to before 9/13 will work.

So barring all this, is it safe to assume that now, emulation is now dead for new people. If so, I am probably going to attempt to take back this everquest titanum and use the $20 toward something else that is more emulation friendly. Any suggestions on a game?

Can I go to ebay and buy an older CD of everquest and play? Maybe when I return it to Gamestop, I can ask them if they have an older version. Or is this work totally based on files that were available from Sony for a period and are now no longer and never will be available again?

Or should I hold on to this Titanium and hope that an emulator is made?

As far as the old client files that work with the emulator go, If those files are so illegal and asking for them here is considered morally wrong, then how come when I login to the loginserver, I still see people playing on an emulator ie, they must be using these illegal files if they are playing. I am still able to login to the login server with Titanium, it just crashes when I try to connect to any of the servers (and yes, I know this has been stated, but I am going to try anyway). Do the current emulator people just not want any newbies in their world?