Most servers are ran from people's home PCs, not what you would normally consider a dedicated server. Normally dedicated server is referring to a server that is hosted in a datacenter that costs a monthy fee to keep running. I think there may be a couple that are hosted dedicated servers, but most of them are not.
Multiple things contribute to zone load times and zone stability. The servers can be set to start all zones statically, which means that they are always up, but it is more resource heavy and if the zone crashes it can only restart as dynamic anyway. But, really the way that the emu handles dynamic zones isn't bad at all. I know on my server that it can boot a zone in just a few seconds. Maybe the server you are on needs to add more ports to their router and to their dynamic port range. My server always has 50 dynamic zones booted so they are ready to load any zone that any players decide to zone into. Normally I only have 10 or 12 zones actually being used at once though.
For zone stability, there are certain things that can make a pretty good impact on helping. For the most part though, I think processor power is probably the most important for calculating all of the hits and exp etc. I think that rampage AE is probably the worst of all, since it causes a ton of calculations to be done all at once. I know my server can handle around 30ish rampage AE targets before it gets too risky and it could probably handle more for spell AE damage. But, my processor is only a 3700 on my server, so it could definitely use an upgrade with double the speed or more. I figured I would mention that just to give an idea of the performance I see.
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