I’ve gone to playing Project 1999, an OG EverQuest emulator server.
It’s only up to velious and it’s as close to how the game was back then as you can get.
I don’t recommend it to people who never played EQ back in the day - games have changed far too much for this ancient game to be fun for most people who don’t have nostalgia for that era of gaming.
But sounds like you might, so I thought I’d suggest it to you.