This is the server I run. We had a few zone crashes last night that I'm still trying to track down, and that may have been the issues you were having.
As for what the server's about, it all started as a place for my friends and I to be able to raid anything we wanted on any night we wanted to. All the bosses are set to 18 hour spawn timers.
We didn't care for the grind, so #zone is enabled, though we'll be switching to #peqzone
as soon as I'm smart enough to get it working. XP is set to 1.5x normal, which gets bumped up a bit (and yes, may seem faster) due to zone XP modifiers and the fact that XP flow is a lot faster on EQEmu than it was on Live.
We ran through all of Luclin and then what was written of Planes of Power at the time. After we were done, we decided that instead of waiting around for more to be written, we'd make another run through. So I remade it as progression.
We have items dropping that were once removed, such as Manastones. The Nexus is open to provide a spell-scriber up to level 51 and a progression NPC who explains how far along we are in progression as well as the server's customizations and general information.
To be truly honest, I've been lazy about this whole deal, but it's really turning out to be fun. The most work I've put into progression has been the triggers from each progression mob and locking the zones.
I'm no guru, but I sure do my best. There was a dust-up over a limit on IPs that I set (2 accounts at a time per person; speak to me directly if you have more than one person playing from a single household), but we had 36 online last night when I logged off.