. N1 virus. you really owned me there. I will restate why OpenEQ was doomed to fail from concept alone. if you use any part of EQ , client , zone files , music , etc .. you are violating the copyright. So then to get around this you would have to make an opensource version of the entire game without using any knowledge or source from the copyrighted game.
I highly doubt anyone will be able to make anything similar to EQ now in under about 3 years
What it comes down to is basically what your are invisioning and attempting to make is a completely new game that has some basic references to EQ but is in no way EQ. So all in all youd do better giving it a name that didnt include EQ(which is copyrighted anyway) OpenEQ includes a different (Inferior) client, 3d renderer , netowrk code, 3d, npc text, quests and lore. now they cant cry warez. why? because it has NOTHING TO DO WITH EQ ANYMORE. if you want to emulate eq there going to have to be able to cry warez. if you just want to make your own server, but with a different engine, client, 3d, and everything, why wait for OpenEQ to do it? your server has nothing to do with eq, use an engine which is already far into development.