With zero experience, that might take you a while. But, if you are using GeorgeS' tool sets, it should make most of that stuff really quick and easy for you to learn and accomplish quickly. Once you know how to do one zone, the rest just get easier and easier. Changing zone lines is the only thing in your post that doesn't have a tool to make it easier, but editing it in the database isn't very hard, especially if you use Navicat for editing the database.
Depending on how much of a perfectionist you are and how many custom changes you plan to make, it could take anywhere from 1 month to a few months to do what you are asking with 0 skill starting out. That is assuming you are at least somewhat of a technical person though. If you aren't technical in any way, then it would take considerably longer because you would definitely need help along the way and help isn't instant unless you have alot of free time to read the forums here thoroughly (most questions you could ask are already answered here somewhere).
As for writing quests, the amount of time it takes you to put in 15 zones with quests could vary ALOT. It all depends on how quickly you can learn Perl, how many quests you want to have per zone, and how complex you want the quests to be. If you are just talking about simple quests, then those can be learned very easily and can be done quickly. But, if you want to make advanced stuff, you would be talking about alot more time investment. My team and I on Storm Haven have been working on 1 zone (Dreadspire) for the past 4 or 5 months and still are not 100% done with it, though it is pretty amazing and more advanced and custom than any other emu zone I have seen
And just as an FYI, your upload speed could probably only handle a max of 20-30 players or so before the server starts having major lag issues.
If you are wanting to make a server to compete with the top custom emu servers, plan to invest months of time working on it every day. I have been working on my server daily for the past 10 months for it to be in the top 2 or 3 of the custom emu servers. But, also know that anytime a new interesting server pops up, you are likely to get a flood of new players coming to check it out. So, the cooler you can make it for when it officially opens, the more likely you are to retain a decent player base. People love something new
a few questions
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