I like WC's ideas on how things could change with coding where we won't have to depend or worry about the changes Sony does to break things on here.
Another point he places is if emu is going to strive it needs to go custom, well besides PEQ, custom content seems to happen as a consequence anyway. Once you figure out how it's done, you wonder what can I add to make this better or "mine". Everyone wants others to experience something that they created. It's hard to get that same feeling when you know that "a_large_bat" right there is from live and you expect it and you don't give a second thought on how it got there or who did it.
This site, and emu, was made for the purpose of re-creating live because that's what everyone wanted and still do. There should be a balance of emulation and custom servers out there to attract a larger following. The Emu name will grow as things get better but is that what we want? How much attention do we want to bring when things start going good? I guess when emu has all it's ducks in a row relating to copyright, then it won't matter how large or popular it gets. I hope I'm around to see that day when EQEmu is in the gossip collumn of MSN.com's homepage